How Fantastical Do You Like Your Fantasy World?

[ruemere]

No idea. No freaking clue.

What I know though is that my players must be able to relate to folks and events taking place.

So that when a monstrous orcish druidic hag* was crying over failing to save children in their village, the PCs helped.

* Scarred Lands setting. Followers of the titans are usually dangerous opponents.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It varies from campaign to campaign, but my default is probably a quasi-realistic setting with fantastic elements.

But some campaigns I’ve been a part of- from either side of the screen- have been quite surreal.

 

[Fifinjir]

Quite a lot of fantastic stuff going around, but not to such a degree that ordinary life doesn’t happen. The village probably has a few people who can do magic and a couple of mystical trinkets locked away, but usually they can’t cast/be used over and over again, so are saved for emergencies. There’s some nasty things lurking in the cursed lands, but usually people can go a few months between them showing up. Then usual things start happening and PCs need to get called in.

Things get weird in that I don’t have much use for having a lot of mortal humanoid species running around, so you average farmer is more likely to run into a low-level demon than say, a dwarf. Which fits what I’m trying to make but still feels a little strange.

 

[GobHag]

Give me the weird naughty word immediately please. Don't bother me with 'realistic' when that's just codeword for boring. Horses are now huge bugs? Yeah sure, Pop concerts in Faux-medieval germany? No big deal, The average professional soldier/Man-at-arms can shoot windblades? sign me up.

Sure people farm, study, suffer and get sick but if they farm fruits of hell or study about God Corpses and get sickness that makes their bones urn evil then I'm all for it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What I prefer is what I call "grounded weirdness." There are weird and fantastic things, but I try to present them as believable part of the world. For my current setting Artra, I wanted the world to feel feel a bit alien, but still recognisable. So it has a lot of little things that set it apart from Earths, for example weird animals, which nevertheless are just normal part of the world. I also want the world to have grit. The sort of fantastic I do not want is plastic-feeling pristine shininess. I like the juxtaposition of fantastic and mundane. Like I want a floating sky fortress with wyvern riders in their battle-worn and weathered armour, and then some poor sod shovelling wyvern crap off the flying island. I want fantastic that nevertheless feels real.

 

[Bae'zel]

It’s all about contrast. If I want the PCs (or even the players themselves) to go “wow”, I need to have some restraint so that when they DO encounter the fantastic, it stands out from the mundanity.

If everything is fantastic, nothing is etc…

I think that the best horror movies do this well: mundane reality, people with “mundane” problems, suddenly encounter the fantastic and it is surprising.

Now ultra high fantasy gonzo settings can work but the emphasis is then a bit less on the wow factor but on other themes, basic conflicts.

Human vs Self or Human vs Nature can be compelling even in a crazy Moebius Numenera setting a billion years in the future on a low gravity world thriving with alien dinosaurs.

 

[Tonguez]

I like it to be as fantastical as it needs to be while still being believable and fun to play in, I like talking animals, palaces made of crystal and floating islands but I want them to be fantastic set peices that the PCs explore and go wow - I dont want them so common that the PCs shrug and go oh another one...

 

[Dausuul]

I like it as fantastical as possible.....except for how people act. I can have a hard time comprehending real human behavior, so I need my fantasy people to act in accordance or defiance of tropes rather than psychology.

But I also find grounded/realistic stuff boring: I'm a person who can't accept "make the fantastical rare so it will be appreciated more" because I already experience that "rareness" every second of life. I want to skip right to the weird, wild, and unusual.

I'm not sure I could give an example of the kind of setting I want: I homebrew because nothing fits my unique vision in just the right way.

My take: I like the fantastical to be rare within the setting as a whole. But it also should not be evenly distributed. There are pockets where the fantastical ramps way up, and that's right where the PCs tend to find themselves.

 

[GobHag]

It’s all about contrast. If I want the PCs (or even the players themselves) to go “wow”, I need to have some restraint so that when they DO encounter the fantastic, it stands out from the mundanity.

If everything is fantastic, nothing is etc…

I think that the best horror movies do this well: mundane reality, people with “mundane” problems, suddenly encounter the fantastic and it is surprising.

Now ultra high fantasy gonzo settings can work but the emphasis is then a bit less on the wow factor but on other themes, basic conflicts.

Human vs Self or Human vs Nature can be compelling even in a crazy Moebius Numenera setting a billion years in the future on a low gravity world thriving with alien dinosaurs.

If you make me go through a Ye Olde Mediaval village to make me go wow against a Dragon or a Skeleton... I don't think that works though.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Do you want the world to feel very real and grounded and possibly even historical? Or do you like the world at large to be weird and wild and unusual? Do you prefer an anchor of believability in order to accentuate the fantasy elements, or o you prefer a world steeped in magic and mysticism and weirdness?

I believe this is a false dichotomy. A fantasy world can be weirdly different from the real world and yet still feel like a real place.

That said, I prefer to build settings and worlds where magic and the supernatural is something baked in, rather than bolted on. And despite - or because - of this baked-in supernatural, there are ultimately explanations for all the things, even if those explanations haven't all been worked out yet.

I also prefer when PCs and the population in general grow up with the fantasy elements, knowing about them even when their understanding is sometimes vague or incorrect. (Everyone correctly understanding how the Real World(tm) works is not a thing. So to have everyone in a fantasy world correctly understand how their world worked would be a fantastic element - and would call for everyone to understand why they understood.)