Atlas of Genres
49 genres and sub-genres across books, tables, screens and live play. Each entry defines the genre, traces where it came from, and shows how to tell it from its neighbors.
On the page
The literary genres, from myth and epic to romantasy and LitRPG. Most fantasy books sit in two or three of these at once.
- Myth & Epicc. 2100 BCE (earliest Gilgamesh poems) onward · 10 worksThe bedrock of the whole museum: the myths, sagas and heroic poems — Gilgamesh, Homer, Beowulf, the Eddas — from which every dragon, quest and doomed hero in fantasy was quarried.
- Arthurian Fantasyc. 1136 (Geoffrey of Monmouth) — medieval romance to the present · 8 worksNine centuries of retelling one story — the sword, the Round Table, the Grail and the fall — from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory to T. H. White, Excalibur and Pendragon.
- Fairy-Tale FantasyLiterary fairy tales from 1634; fairy-tale novels from 1858 (Phantastes) · 12 worksFantasy built from the stuff of Once Upon a Time — Grimm, Perrault and Andersen stretched into novels, turned inside out, and handed back to adults with the teeth left in.
- Children's & YA FantasyVictorian Britain (Alice, 1865; Nesbit, 1899–1906); YA boom from the late 1990s · 12 worksThe door most readers walk through first: Wonderland, Narnia, Earthsea, Prydain and Hogwarts — fantasy written for young readers that has repeatedly redefined the whole genre.
- Portal Fantasy1865 (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) onward · 10 worksThrough the rabbit-hole, the wardrobe or the amusement-park ride: fantasy in which someone from our world steps into another — from Wonderland and Narnia to the D&D cartoon and isekai.
- Weird Fictionc. 1880–1940 "haute weird"; Weird Tales from 1923; New Weird from c. 2000 · 1 worksTentacles, forbidden geometry and gods that do not care: the uncanny tradition of Machen, Blackwood and Lovecraft's Weird Tales, reborn in the New Weird and at every Call of Cthulhu table.
- Comic Fantasy1882 (F. Anstey's Vice Versa); the modern boom from 1983 (Discworld) · 6 worksFantasy played for laughs — from Wonderland's nonsense and Harold Shea's botched spells to Discworld's turtle-borne satire, The Princess Bride and the rules-lawyering of gaming comedy.
- High / Epic Fantasy1890s (William Morris); defined by Tolkien, 1954–55 · 38 worksThe genre of the map in the front of the book: invented worlds, world-ending threats and quests that span trilogies — Tolkien's legacy, from Morris and Eddison to Jordan and Sanderson.
- Low FantasyEdwardian children's fantasy (E. Nesbit, 1902) onward; gaming sense from the 1980s · 6 worksTwo genres under one name: magic breaking into our own world, as in E. Nesbit and The Dark Is Rising — and, in gamers' mouths, gritty worlds where magic is rare and a sword wound can kill.
- Science FantasyBurroughs's Barsoom (1912); named in the 1930s–40s pulps · 12 worksSwords and starships, psionics and sorcery, dragons bred on colony worlds: the hybrid of science fiction and fantasy that runs from Barsoom and Pern to Tékumel, Rifts and Final Fantasy's airships.
- Historical FantasyEarly 20th century (Dunsany, Anderson); a major category from the 1980s · 5 worksThe past with magic in it: Napoleonic wizards, dragons in the Royal Navy, sorcery in Moorish Spain and Mythic Europe — history reproduced faithfully, save for one impossible thread.
- Sword & Sorcery1929–32, Weird Tales (Howard's Kull and Conan) · 10 worksBlood, steel and bad magic: the pulp-born genre of Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Elric — personal adventures at the edge of civilization that gave D&D its rogues and its appetite for treasure.
- Mythic Fantasy1930s (Walton's Mabinogion novels); flourishing from the 1970s · 10 worksModern fiction made from ancient myth — Welsh gods in Prydain, Norse elves in The Broken Sword, Greek witches in Circe, old gods on American highways — and invented mythologies with the weight of real ones.
- Dark FantasyGothic and weird roots; named in the 1970s–80s · 25 worksFantasy that has crossed into horror: cursed swords, vampire lords, plague-ridden kingdoms and gods that should not be woken — from Elric and Ravenloft to Diablo and Dark Souls.
- Shared-World & Tie-In FictionCthulhu Mythos precursors (1920s–30s); Thieves' World (1979); game tie-in lines from 1984 · 5 worksWorlds with many authors: from Lovecraft's circle trading gods and Thieves' World's city of Sanctuary to Dragonlance, Drizzt and the Black Library — where fantasy fiction and gaming merged into one business.
- LitRPG & Progression FantasyPrecursors 1978–2009; Russian LitRPG from 2012; English boom from the mid-2010s · 2 worksNovels with character sheets: fiction set in game worlds where stats, levels and loot appear on the page — from Russian LitRPG and Sword Art Online to the runaway success of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
- RomantasyRoots in medieval romance; the 'romantasy' boom of the 2010s–2020s · 2 worksFae princes, dragon riders and enemies who become lovers: the romance-first fantasy of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros that turned BookTok into a bestseller machine in the 2020s.
- Cozy FantasyLabel prominent from 2020; roots in The Hobbit (1937) and Howl's Moving Castle (1986)Fantasy after the quest: an orc mercenary opens a coffee shop, a witch runs a bookshop, and the drama is whether the community will pull together — the gentle genre that boomed in the 2020s.
At the table
Games played with dice, cards, miniatures and paper: wargames, board games, gamebooks and tabletop roleplaying.
- Miniatures & Board Wargames1812–24 Prussian Kriegsspiel; hobby rules 1913; commercial board wargames 1954 · 6 worksPainted soldiers on sand tables, cardboard counters on hex maps: the game of generals that trained Prussian officers, amused H. G. Wells and, in a Minnesota basement, gave birth to the roleplaying game.
- Play-by-Mail Games1963 postal Diplomacy; 1970 commercial PBM; peak 1980s; email from the 1990sStrategy by envelope: write your orders on a turn sheet, mail them off, and wait two weeks for a computer printout to tell you whether your fleet survived and which of thirty strangers betrayed you.
- Tabletop Roleplaying Games1974 (Dungeons & Dragons); proto-roleplaying from 1969 (Braunstein) · 42 worksThe game in which you play one person, in a world a friend describes, with no board, no fixed ending and no winner — invented in the Midwest in the early 1970s and descended from miniature wargames.
- Narrative & Story Games (incl. Powered by the Apocalypse)Roleplaying games built to tell a particular kind of story: the indie-design movement of the Forge, Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World, whose 2d6 "moves" spawned hundreds of Powered by the Apocalypse games.
- Old-School Renaissance (OSR)A movement to play roleplaying games the way they were played in the 1970s — deadly dungeons, clever players, rulings not rules — built on legal clones of early D&D and grown into a vibrant DIY scene.
- Solo & Journaling RPGsRoleplaying for one: a notebook, a few dice and an oracle that answers 'yes, but…', so that a lone player can explore a dungeon, swear an iron vow or write a vampire's thousand years of forgetting.
- Universal & Generic RPG SystemsOne set of rules for every world: Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, Champions and the Hero System, GURPS, the d20 System, Fate and Savage Worlds — the RPG engines built to play fantasy, horror, space opera or anything else.
- Fantasy Adventure Board Games1975 (Dungeon!); golden age 1980s; revival 2000s · 6 worksThe roleplaying game folded into a box: roll, move, draw an encounter card, gain a sword or a spell, and race your friends' heroes toward a crown, a tower or a dragon's hoard before the evening ends.
- Gamebooks & Interactive Books1976 (Sugarcane Island, Buffalo Castle); boom 1979–late 1980s; precursors from 1930 · 4 worksThe book that asks what you do next: turn to 214 to open the door, to 87 to flee, with a pencil, two dice and a finger holding your place in case the troll wins.
- Collectible & Trading Card Games1993 (Magic: The Gathering) · 2 worksA game you assemble from a collection you are still building: crack a booster, find a rare, rebuild your deck, and meet a stranger across the table with sixty cards neither of you has fully revealed.
On the screen
Computer and console role-playing, from text adventures and MUDs to soulslikes and MMOs.
- Western Computer RPGs (CRPG)1975 (PLATO mainframe dungeons); home computers from 1979 · 41 worksDungeons & Dragons translated into code: the computer role-playing game, born on university mainframes in 1975, that runs from Ultima and Wizardry to Baldur's Gate 3.
- Interactive Fiction & Text Adventures1975–77, on the ARPANET · 2 worksThe game made of words: type a command, read the world's reply. From a caver's ARPANET experiment to Infocom's shelf of classics to today's Twine and IFComp scenes, it is the oldest living form of digital adventure.
- MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)1978, University of Essex · 2 worksA text adventure that many people could inhabit at once: typed commands, prose rooms, strangers typing back. The MUD was the first online world and the direct ancestor of every MMORPG.
- RoguelikesBeneath Apple Manor (1978) and Rogue (c. 1980); named on Usenet c. 1993 · 5 worksAn @ sign, a dungeon that never repeats, and one life: the college-terminal genre named for Rogue, fought over in Berlin in 2008, and reborn as the indie roguelite.
- Open-World RPGsUltima (1981) and Hydlide (1984); Elder Scrolls from 1994 · 12 worksSee that mountain? You can climb it: the RPG as a whole country to wander, from Ultima's tiled continents to Daggerfall's procedural Britain-sized realm, Skyrim and Elden Ring.
- Action RPGs & Hack-and-Slash1984 (The Tower of Druaga, Dragon Slayer, Hydlide) · 17 worksSwing the sword yourself: the real-time RPG that began in Japan in 1984, went global with Diablo's click-and-loot, and splits into hack-and-slash, loot chaser and soulslike.
- Japanese RPGs (JRPG)Mid-1980s Japanese home computers and the Famicom · 14 worksThe console role-playing tradition Japan built out of Wizardry and Ultima: fixed heroes, menu battles, sweeping authored stories, and some of the most beloved music in games.
- Tactical & Strategy RPGsPrecursors 1982–88; codified by Fire Emblem, 1990 · 4 worksThe RPG played as a war game: named heroes who grow, die and are remembered, moved square by square across a battlefield where every step and every flank counts.
- MMORPGs1991 (first graphical online RPG); named c. 1997 · 14 worksThe massively multiplayer online role-playing game: a graphical world shared by thousands at once, where a guild, a raid schedule and a virtual economy can matter as much as the story.
- Monster-Collecting RPGsPrecursors 1987–92; popularized by Pokémon, 1996 · 1 worksThe RPG in which the monsters become the party: find them, befriend or capture them, train them, trade them, and try to catch them all.
- Gacha & Live-Service RPGsJapanese mobile games of the early 2010s; roots in 2000s Asian free-to-playThe role-playing game as a capsule-toy machine that never closes: free to start, endlessly updated, and paid for one randomized summon at a time.
In the theater and the field
Film, television, live-action roleplay, and the new form of actual play.
- Fantasy FilmLate 1890s, the trick films of Georges Méliès · 8 worksFrom Méliès's stage-trick fairy tales to Peter Jackson's Middle-earth, fantasy film has always been a race between imagination and effects technology, and for most of a century the effects lost.
- Fantasy Television & AnimationLate 1950s–60s anthologies and sitcoms; secondary-world fantasy from the 1970s–80s · 6 worksFrom Rankin/Bass hobbits and Saturday-morning Dungeons & Dragons to Game of Thrones and streaming Middle-earth, fantasy television grew from a cartoon ghetto into the most expensive drama ever made.
- Live-Action Roleplay (LARP)Late 1970s; earliest recorded group Dagorhir, 1977Roleplaying on your feet: players in costume become their characters in a real place and real time, swinging foam swords in a forest or negotiating vampire politics in a hotel ballroom.
- Actual Play2000s recordings and podcasts; mainstream from 2015 (Japanese print 'replays' from 1986) · 1 worksWatching other people play Dungeons & Dragons, and loving it: the podcast and stream genre that turned home games into hit shows, record-breaking Kickstarters and animated series.