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I hate Tolkien: suggest a fantasy setting.

AbeTheGnome

First Post
Not really. I loved LotR when I was a kid, and JRR made a great contribution to the fantasy genre. However, I feel like fantasy in general, and fantasy RPG's in particular, have been copying his work ever since. I want to get away from the Tolkienesque fantasy tropes and play something different. I want evil elves! I want dwarves who don't wear beards! I want grit, and anti-heroes! Suggest something to me? Is it Conan? Is it Midnight? Is it Dark Sun? Dark Legacies? Thieve's World? If you've played these games, tell me what you like, what you don't like, and why. If you have any other dark fantasy settings, tell me about those too.
 

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matthewajg

First Post
Try a setting that is not from the occidental tradition; such as a Japanese folklore inspired setting like that in KITSUNEMORI from Dog Soul. You could also try other non-western inspired games that offer an alternative to the heavily Norse inspired Tolkein vein of fantasy RPG's.
 

BiggusGeekus

That's Latin for "cool"
For grit: Valus, if you can find a copy.

No elves: http://www.talislanta.com/

I haven't played Talisantia, but lots of people have reccomended it.

There's also conan as you observed.
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/series.php?qsSeries=7
(again never played)


Watch out for some of the "no elves" settings. I've found that some of them advertise "no elves" and the like, but they have a race of beautiful, wise, magical people that are blue or something. Sure, they don't look like Liv Tyler with pointy ears, but thematically they're still elves.
 

Teflon Billy

Explorer
AbeTheGnome said:
Not really. I loved LotR when I was a kid, and JRR made a great contribution to the fantasy genre. However, I feel like fantasy in general, and fantasy RPG's in particular, have been copying his work ever since. I want to get away from the Tolkienesque fantasy tropes and play something different. I want evil elves! I want dwarves who don't wear beards! I want grit, and anti-heroes! Suggest something to me? Is it Conan? Is it Midnight? Is it Dark Sun? Dark Legacies? Thieve's World? If you've played these games, tell me what you like, what you don't like, and why. If you have any other dark fantasy settings, tell me about those too.

Conan is my choice right off the bat. No elves, no dwarves, magic is evil and peculiar and "civilization" is barely there.

If you are looking for somthing more "D&D" than that, look no further than the excellent Warlords of the Accordlands. It's the first whole-cloth setting to really inspire me since Dawnforge.

Hope that helps.
 

mmadsen

First Post
AbeTheGnome said:
I want to get away from the Tolkienesque fantasy tropes and play something different. I want evil elves! I want dwarves who don't wear beards! I want grit, and anti-heroes!
If you want to get away from Tolkien, I'd suggest a setting with no elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc. That might be Robert E. Howard's Hyborea (Conan) or Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. If you want to "twist" the Tolkien races, Dark Sun has already done that.
 
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mhacdebhandia

Explorer
Eberron.

About the only thing I can't promise you is beardless dwarves; the dwarves of Eberron are the closest to their "roots" as any race in the setting gets. On the other hand, they did claw themselves up from barbarism relatively recently, historically speaking: no "ancient kingdom under the mountain" here.

But the other Tolkienesque races? Elves In Name Only, Halflings In Name Only, Orcs In Name Only (almost). The two dominant elven cultures are the Aereni, who revere their greatest ancestors so much they preserve them as deathless and have established them as a living gestalt deity, and the Tairnadal, who strive in all things to emulate the deeds of their heroic ancestors and are therefore glory-seeking warmongers. Halflings, famously, ride dinosaurs in their nomadic bands of plains-dwellers. There are tribes of barbaric orcs corrupted by the evil which lurks in the world below, but they were also the first druids and saved the world from invasion by unspeakable planar horrors.

The other thing that's great about Eberron is the fact that there are significant minorities of all the non-human races who consider themselves to be first and foremost members of the majority-human nations - an elf in the city of Sharn in Breland considers herself a Brelander, most likely, and probably has a family history in that nation as long as your average human's. Also, half-elves consider themselves their own race, having been around and breeding true since the days of the first human-elven contact thousands of years ago.

Eberron is a setting of grey morality, where you can be a noble hero but you can also be a cynical, war-weary anti-hero. The world's just pulled itself out of a century-long war that could break out again at any moment; there's espionage and film noir-like intrigue aplenty, but also a lot of room for pulp adventure a la Doc Savage or Indiana Jones.

I loathe Tolkien's setting and the way his conventions have dominated fantasy and fantasy roleplaying for thirty years, and I love Eberron for all the ways it takes a different, contemporary approach to the genre.

I really think it's the best anti-Tolkien setting that still supports the standard D&D experience. You can get further from Tolkien with post-apocalyptic settings like Dark Sun, or spacefaring settings like Spelljammer, or reality-hopping settings like Planescape, but if you want a world with kingdoms and continents and all the "standard features", yet wholly unlike Tolkien, Eberron is what you want.
 

The Grackle

First Post
AbeTheGnome said:
Not really. I loved LotR when I was a kid, and JRR made a great contribution to the fantasy genre. However, I feel like fantasy in general, and fantasy RPG's in particular, have been copying his work ever since. I want to get away from the Tolkienesque fantasy tropes and play something different. I want evil elves! I want dwarves who don't wear beards! I want grit, and anti-heroes! Suggest something to me? Is it Conan? Is it Midnight? Is it Dark Sun? Dark Legacies? Thieve's World? If you've played these games, tell me what you like, what you don't like, and why. If you have any other dark fantasy settings, tell me about those too.

Ever read Dying Earth by Jack Vance? Not Middle Earthy, yet still so D&D. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth
 

GlassJaw

Hero
Conan rocks. Just started a campaign running some of the published modules. The session ended with everyone singing the praises of the system. Great ruleset and emulates the stories pretty well.
 


hewligan

First Post
It sounds a bit like the book I am writing. The elves tried to kill the Gods of men, and were pretty much hounded close to extinction for doing so. They have lost their high magic, and faded from view - a real border race. The dwarves live above ground as often as below, and in fact even their mountain kingdoms are all about ore extraction, with the cities largely built on to the mountains. Some shave, some don't, but they all care about appearance and are not your DnD dwarves. They are traders, filling a niche, working with whatever races they need to.

I have no orcs, but I have 2 other races that fill that void. 1, the Narkash, are the traditional baddies, except that they are intelligent, often beautiful, if rather close to barbarism. The second are a deep dwelling race that have toughened back and head plates, large hands with boney, clawing fingers, flabby skin (almost like seal skin), and huge round eyes that force them to wear darkened gogles when in the sun (rare). They are not cookie-cutter evil, just intensely protective of their own, and willing to do what is required to safeguard themselves.

My goblins are called Herdak. They are an underclass in the human realms. They tend to fill the slums, and often are the backbone of most illicit trades.

Magic is dead, or was, but traces of it are awakening.

More importantly, my hero is not a hero. I deliberately started with the old cliche -boy in exile finds out he is son of king with a unique power, and a fate to destroy some ancient evil artifact. The truth is very different from this. I wanted to subvert the standard template, and my hero quickly becomes less heroic than most are used to. His evil artifact is not what it seems, and the Elves ... well, they had a blood good point, as it happens.

Anyway - I made these changes because I, like you, was getting sick of all of DnD seeming to spawn from Tolkien. I know there are some alternative settings. I owned the original Talislanta (probably still up the loft), but it did have elves - only they were colourful and bald and were not called elves. We have all pretty much fallen under the gravitational pull of Tolkien, for the power of his work was so immense. I think for the past 10 years or so people have started to try and subvert that a little, but are still staying within the confines of his work (inc. my book). There have been some unique offerings, but nothing mainstream.

At some point someone will tap into a rich creative vein and produce some unique setting that is still powerful enough to resonate with people. Until that time:

1) Try Lankhmar (not the new setting - I haven't read it, I just mean read a few books and use that theme for your campaign).
2) Try Darksun, if you can get a hold of it.
 

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