How Fantastical Do You Like Your Fantasy World?

[Ruin Explorer]

What fantasy world sort of exemplify the degree of fantasticalness you prefer? Which ones are too much? Which ones are too little?

Earthdawn gets it right for me.

It actually integrates that fantastical elements into the setting. Like, it understood that if you have common-place magic, people will want to use that in the home - so they have fairly common magical self-heating cookpots, for example (something that would be incredibly useful).

That's what I'm looking for. I have absolutely no time for settings where it's basically "faux-medieval Europe with a disconnected layer of fantasy elements dropped on top and barely integrated at all" (worse, Mystara's "Oh here's faux-India but we replaced Indian people with cat men!" or the like - I don't know if that's an actual Mystara country but I'd buy it as one if you told me it was!).

Yet that "disconnected layers" deal is perhaps most fantasy settings. Albeit I am talking very expansively, including all the really bad ones no-one discusses.

It's not really the "degree of fantastical-ness" that matters to me, it's the degree of integration of the fantastical elements into the actual setting.

You can get problems going the opposite direction too - you can have a very fantastical setting, with a lot of wild elements, but everyone in the setting is depicted as just acting like 21st century Americans would, essentially (I'm not even talking re: sexism/homophobia/racism, that's fine to avoid, to be clear, I'm talking in even broader attitudes, like how they value education or justice), for no apparent reason, and going against the general (often desperate or wild) tone of the setting. Or Numenera, which has this amazing overall setting, and then the example city is basically a collection of cheap and lazy medieval fantasy and steampunk tropes which seems completely at-odds with this "insanely far future tech is magic" setting!

I want a unified whole. I want a thought-through setting where stuff makes sense. I'm willing to accept a significant degree of contrivance, and some elision, to make things work, but like, give me something! Make the setting feel like a single piece, not just some junk lazily layered on top of each other. I'd much rather something aggressively weird, but which worked, tonally/conceptually than something which was easy to understand but was also just a bunch of junk in a pile (looking at you, Greyhawk, Mystara, a lot of the Forgotten Realms albeit not all of it, etc).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

Agree 100%.

Some of the worst, least-believable, least consistent fantasy worlds are actually ones down at the low-magic, low-mysticism end of the scale, whereas some very strange ones can absolutely feel like real places, usually largely through the power of being properly imagined and self-consistent.

(This is also very, very true in fantasy novels.)

 

[Reynard]

Earthdawn gets it right for me.

Absolutely.

It actually integrates that fantastical elements into the setting. Like, it understood that if you have common-place magic, people will want to use that in the home - so they have fairly common magical self-heating cookpots, for example (something that would be incredibly useful).

Plus, it has fun with making D&Disms work in the context of the world.

That's what I'm looking for. I have absolutely no time for settings where it's basically "faux-medieval Europe with a disconnected layer of fantasy elements dropped on top and barely integrated at all" (worse, Mystara's "Oh here's faux-India but we replaced Indian people with cat men!" or the like - I don't know if that's an actual Mystara country but I'd buy it as one if you told me it was!).

Yeah. The whole not-[insert Earth culture] style of world building is about the laziest form of world building. At least have the courage to set it on mythic Earth if that's what you want.

One exception on integration for me is if I am running a dedicated megadungeon crawl game. I actually like to depict the underworld as something wholly alien. If the place the PCs hail from is 14th century England-ish, then the dungeon is Gamma World.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah. The whole not-[insert Earth culture] style of world building is about the laziest form of world building. At least have the courage to set it on mythic Earth if that's what you want.

I think it can be done right, but you have to be willing to do more than "A lazy and uneducated take on medieval India but cat-people"*, and just most of the time people aren't. You also have to look further afield than like "Vikings, Romans, Samurai"-type stuff, and most people can't/won't.

* = which is also, arguably, a little racist, because it's very rarely white cultures that get replaced by animal-people or orcs or other "monster-y" races or the like. I wouldn't say never, but it's close - I think Palladium Fantasy maybe did Romans as wolf-people or something, but I literally haven't looked at that since the mid-1990s so I could be hallucinating it!

 

[Reynard]

I think it can be done right, but you have to be willing to do more than "A lazy and uneducated take on medieval India but cat-people"*, and just most of the time people aren't. You also have to look further afield than like "Vikings, Romans, Samurai"-type stuff, and most people can't/won't.

* = which is also, arguably, a little racist, because it's very rarely white cultures that get replaced by animal-people or orcs or other "monster-y" races or the like. I wouldn't say never, but it's close - I think Palladium Fantasy maybe did Romans as wolf-people or something, but I literally haven't looked at that since the mid-1990s so I could be hallucinating it!

Years ago I ran a fantasy Post-Roman Britain game and I made the Anglo-Saxons goblinoid races.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Years ago I ran a fantasy Post-Roman Britain game and I made the Anglo-Saxons goblinoid races.

I wholeheartedly approve!

 

[Bae'zel]

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.

This thread is about expressing personal preferences, not debating them.

I'm explaining that I prefer some restraint in a setting: the fantastic is more... fantastic to me when put in contrast with the "non fantastic".

A gleaming magic sword is a more special thing to find when the party hasn't already found 2 dozen of them. A dragon is more of a spectacular sight when they're not as common as pigeons. Skeletons are more scary when your typical person isn't aware of such things beyond myth or legend... and they have a chance of being perceived as scary.

To reiterate: to each their own.

 

[John R Davis]

Quite fantastic but not too weird

 

[Bae'zel]

I want a unified whole. I want a thought-through setting where stuff makes sense. I'm willing to accept a significant degree of contrivance, and some elision, to make things work, but like, give me something! Make the setting feel like a single piece, not just some junk lazily layered on top of each other. I'd much rather something aggressively weird, but which worked, tonally/conceptually than something which was easy to understand but was also just a bunch of junk in a pile (looking at you, Greyhawk, Mystara, a lot of the Forgotten Realms albeit not all of it, etc).

Yeah I get this.

Some of my favorite comics ever are from Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius. Gonzo is an understatement. But the stories are compelling to me, after a while the high fantasy, surreal sci-fi stuff takes the background to the interesting characters and dramatic conflicts.

I had a funny experience in the 90s with my "World of Darkness" groups. Players were so focused on faction conflicts and super powers that they lost the "human" element of their characters. When I introduced a Were Raven into a party of mages, vampires, were wolves and Changelings, our powers were the LEAST interesting things about us. I focused on WHO my character was and what internal strife, past traumas and current mundane problems defined them (not how much damage they did in combat). I had a lot more fun that I thought I would have, but got ZERO interest in the other characters who were described to me not as a bundle of character traits, but as power levels.

 

[payn]

So, I want to add a bit to my post in this thread. GoT mostly mundane with a splash of fantastical is my preference for GMing a game. I have no problem playing in a fantastical game, its just not where my creative GM energy lies. Eberron is pretty fantastic for example, and Id play in it in a second, but id likely never run anything with it.