Creating a Generic Setting. (Interested?)

[Evenglare]

So, I have always wanted to make a generic fantasy setting. Sure people say that forgotten realms, and other settings are generic, but compared to what? Why are they generic? Most settings have some sort of hook to them. So my idea is to make a truly generic setting , the amount of cliche would be so astounding that it would stand apart from anything else making it unique in a way...

So would anyone like to help ? Throw out ideas, cliche's , something fundamental to fantasy .

For example something that I would make would be an "Elven Forest" with a tree top city for wood elves, or the dwarven mountains, how about a Swamp of Sorrows, or the world tree? An underwater city with vast ruins or advanced tech...

So just throw out some ideas!

 

[Jinete]

For example something that I would make would be an "Elven Forest" with a tree top city for wood elves, or the dwarven mountains, how about a Swamp of Sorrows, or the world tree? An underwater city with vast ruins or advanced tech...

Sounds a lot like my current game

 

[amerigoV]

Hill Giants could have a huge garden with Gnomes in them.

 

[fireinthedust]

You're already getting too specific and different.

Locations should have the word "the" in them: The Village, The City, The Forest of...

You need to have very basic concepts covered, and lots of "mystery boxes" that are very general.

The city has a thieves guild (called "The Thieves Guild"), a sewer system with giant rats and slimes in it, and a magic item shop.

The village has a healer, an Inn/tavern, and a blacksmith.

The forest has elves living in it. Really you may even want to make it "really big" because adventures can happen there. In fact, The Forest, The Dungeon, and The Underdark are all "really big".

There is an ancient civilization in the setting. All they did was make magic items and traps, and turn everyone into undead or other monsters. This is exactly why they died? Well, no: they died because of "The Cataclysm", which left only dungeons and magical items and monsters behind. Maybe Mind Flayers did it. yeah, that's about right.

The Dungeon is right outside of town, whatever your major setting will be. Under the city is a great option (allowing them to go shopping), or it could be in ruins near The Village.


There are elves and dwarves and they don't like each other, even though both of them hate goblins for some reason (which is weird because goblins don't often have spellcasters, and both elves and dwarves specialize in tier 1 classes; why don't they just wipe Goblins out?). They also both hate Drow, who are in every single dungeon and behind every single plot. Why the two major races haven't ironed out their differences is unimportant. Don't ever worry about it, unless the PCs want to change it.


Humans are the boss of everything not in The Forest or The Mountains.

There are dragons. Put a specific one in a specific location the heroes can reach, and let them go to it whenever they want. Let the dice fall where they may. Chances are they'll try to use it to take out a big boss monster or other threat. Play with that.

 

[gamerprinter]

I generally feel generic worlds are a 'dime a dozen'; Grey Hawk, Forgotten Realms, Golarian - every edition has got one, why do we need more? I don't need another Middle Earth. The Core books of most systems are vanilla settings in box. I like the subsequent books of a system that go beyond core and look at more exotic races, classes and situations.

While I don't care for completely exotic settings like Dark Sun, I like a slightly generic world with more or less exotic regions scattered throughout. I generally don't build worlds, rather regions only. And since my regions are published settings, they are designed to be plug-and-play, ready to be placed into any existing campaign setting. I prefer Sherbert or Pistachio to vanilla settings.

When you get to needing an oriental region of your world, look to Kaidan, that is my current published setting (for Pathfinder RPG).