How Fantastical Do You Like Your Fantasy World?

[Celebrim]

I prefer the world to be both explainable and comprehensible. While I love weird, and for example think that Nitro Ferguson's idea of basing the gods of his world on 20th century pop stars is very cool, what is not cool is Nitro's desire to play "gotcha" with his players and keep them in a state of confusion. Real agency requires communicable knowledge and if your world is too numinous and weird such that knowledge isn't shareable and consequences predictable, if you are running a game that is cloud cuckoo land then you are just screwing with your players in order to stay fully in control of the game.

It's also a lot harder world building to make something truly weird and also have it work. You're likely to end up as shallow as you are weird. Which isn't to say that I like real world pastiche either, but it's a lot easier to take inspiration from the world and make something complex than it is to invent things whole cloth. For example, I like to blend two historical cultures and then spice it up with the fantastic to make something that feels unique, like pre-colonial India meets medieval Italy with heavy access to domesticated ice age megafauna. That gives me a lot to draw on while being unique enough that it won't be immediately obvious what my sources are. Age of Exploration France meets Luo culture of West Africa. Mongolian horde meets Aztec Empire. Ireland meets Japan while being ruled by semi-immortal alchemists. Iran blended with Holland. Republican Rome plus Edgar Allen Poe short stories as nation state. It's still easier that coming up with everything on my own.

I like magic to be complex but not arbitrary. There is a fine line to walk between magic as pure DM fiat and magic as technology. I don't like the former, but I also don't want the world of Disqworld or Eberron where it's just real world stuff done with magic.

 

[Epic Meepo]

Damn, now I want that setting.

I would be all over a vampires, robots, and wombats setting.

Since you asked so kindly, I started this thread with a setting featuring robots, vampires, and wombats.

 

[Knight-of-Roses]

For my current campaign, very fantastic. Islands floating in space, impossible seas, a captive Sun, but people just role with it. It is the way the world is, you know? That does not mean that they will not react with awe when encountering certain things but the world is self-consciously high fantasy.

But people are people and they adapt. If trees grow shoes, an industry grows up around that, for exmple.

 

[nightlight.zero]

I really love science fantasy / crystalpunk / magitech settings personally, because I find that they blend the best parts of fantasy storytelling and science fiction storytelling pretty well. You can tell stories about esoteric magic at the same time as more “modern” stories. They also tend to solve the biggest believability issues I have with renaissance-y high fantasy a la the big fantasy systems.

But more than that, the thing I care about most both as a player and as a GM is consistency. Settings that don’t make sense or feel weird or have odd inconsistencies are a real struggle. This is very subjective. It also doesn’t mean you have to explain everything.

 

[aramis erak]

This question is not about how fantastical you like your PCs, or your villains, or your dungeons. Rather, it is about how fantastical you like your broader world -- the big backdrop of your fantastical adventures.

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 do you prefer a world steeped in magic and mysticism and weirdness?

I'm good with any level of weirdness that isn't illogical given its premises.

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

I've enjoyed such diverse settings as Mouse Guard (Almost no magic, but talking animals, and mammals generally intelligent), Legend of the Five Rings (loads of clerical and evil magic, plus some Wuxia, plus deities still walking the planet), Pendragon (both without and with PC casters in the otherwise knightly party), and magitech type settings.
WHat I do need is a consitent rules interface. If the players can't make sense of the weirdness, then it's not worth it.

And as an aside, how do you prefer the PCs to discover the fantasy of the setting? is it what they grew up with, or is it something new and formidable in their adventures?

I prefer the PCs be aware of some of it. Much, not all

Note also that this is not about D&D, though I expect D&Disms will be discussed.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I like magic to be complex but not arbitrary. There is a fine line to walk between magic as pure DM fiat and magic as technology. I don't like the former, but I also don't want the world of Disqworld or Eberron where it's just real world stuff done with magic.

Another fine line is between magic that's expensive enough to rule out common mundane use and magic that's cheap enough to completely displace the mundane.

An illustrative example would be light sources. At what point does it become "pound wise and penny-foolish" to keep buying torches or lamp oil, rather than paying up-front, once, for an everburning torch or other permanent magical light? My own assumptions and approximations say that if a torch is 1 cp and burns 1 hour, then an Everburning Torch ought to be 840 gp at the balance point, and that a 110 gp magic torch would call for 1 cp torches that were good for 8 hours each.

(Lamp oil is even worse, apparently due to the conceit that lamp oil can be used as a flaming oil weapon, with the Gods of Game Balance demanding that it be expensive as a result.)

Now sometimes one wants to mark certain things as being "magic is the standard, commonplace way of doing this thing." So if one wants to worldbuild a setting where mundane torches, lanterns, and candles are quaint and primitive with magic lights being the common standard light sources in everyday (or everynight) use, then an imbalance in favor of magic light sources is actually desirable.

So an important worldbuilding question is "What is magic particularly good (and cheap) at doing?"

 

[Reynard]

Another fine line is between magic that's expensive enough to rule out common mundane use and magic that's cheap enough to completely displace the mundane.

An illustrative example would be light sources. At what point does it become "pound wise and penny-foolish" to keep buying torches or lamp oil, rather than paying up-front, once, for an everburning torch or other permanent magical light? My own assumptions and approximations say that if a torch is 1 cp and burns 1 hour, then an Everburning Torch ought to be 840 gp at the balance point, and that a 110 gp magic torch would call for 1 cp torches that were good for 8 hours each.

(Lamp oil is even worse, apparently due to the conceit that lamp oil can be used as a flaming oil weapon, with the Gods of Game Balance demanding that it be expensive as a result.)

Now sometimes one wants to mark certain things as being "magic is the standard, commonplace way of doing this thing." So if one wants to worldbuild a setting where mundane torches, lanterns, and candles are quaint and primitive with magic lights being the common standard light sources in everyday (or everynight) use, then an imbalance in favor of magic light sources is actually desirable.

So an important worldbuilding question is "What is magic particularly good (and cheap) at doing?"

I like the idea that one might make an everburning torch, but it should still create heat and smoke. There should always be a tradeoff.

Maybe it creates a certain kind of heat and smoke? Maybe only he'll fire burns endlessly, or something akin to Deadlands' ghost rock.

Because otherwise just give them flashlights.

 

[Celebrim]

Another fine line is between magic that's expensive enough to rule out common mundane use and magic that's cheap enough to completely displace the mundane.

Yes. This is something Gygaxian D&D considered very little, and more recent versions of D&D didn't consider at all, with the result that if you take the magic in the setting seriously, then global economies should look radically different from what is portrayed in D&D source books. The setting becomes really difficult to imagine as there are so many things magic just should be the answer for giving the claimed availability of magic in the setting.

An illustrative example would be light sources. At what point does it become "pound wise and penny-foolish" to keep buying torches or lamp oil, rather than paying up-front, once, for an everburning torch or other permanent magical light? My own assumptions and approximations say that if a torch is 1 cp and burns 1 hour, then an Everburning Torch ought to be 840 gp at the balance point, and that a 110 gp magic torch would call for 1 cp torches that were good for 8 hours each.

Yes, and it's important to note that such light sources are in fact cheap enough to obsolete all other ones. In my 3e inspired game the limiting factor and the reason that magical light sources haven't completely replaced non-magical ones is the inability of wizards to continually pay the XP costs of production of such items. There is a higher demand in most economies than can be provided for by the hedge wizards that make common magic items. This has world building implications. There is for example a particular city in my campaign world known for its plentiful magical lights where unbeknownst to the people in charge of the city, the lamp lighters are resorting to murdering vagrants and orphans to pay the XP costs necessary to upkeep the lights. And this economic implications. When selling an item, the maker must factor the XP costs into the costs of production when determining a sale price. Items which can be produced more quickly than XP can be accumulated have to have their price increased when being sold to reflect the real cost to the artifacer.

(Lamp oil is even worse, apparently due to the conceit that lamp oil can be used as a flaming oil weapon, with the Gods of Game Balance demanding that it be expensive as a result.)

This has to be a recent edition problem because I can never remember this as a problem. There were always two types of oil - lamp oil which was assumed to be some sort of vegetable oil or other liquid fat (and was relatively cheap, say about $10 a vial) and flaming oil which was assumed to be some sort of rare alchemical product or distillate ("Greek Fire") probably some sort of petroleum product and which was quite expensive (about $1875 a vial).

So yes, in my game light is quite cheap and candles and lamps are primarily used in a ceremonial fashion or else by the very poor who horde them and tend to only use them in emergencies. Torches are rarely used, and when they are used it's primarily in situations where fire is just as useful as light. For example, "Rat Catchers" use torches commonly in their work because the sort of vermin their profession calls upon them to deal with can include all sorts of nasty "dungeon" creatures like green slime, yellow mold, rot grubs, and so forth where having a fire source handy is really important. This wouldn't imply they don't also have a guy on the team using magical light to use as light for the value of light, but that the torches have more value that just being light.

And yes, "Rat Catchers", "Undertakers", and "Lumberjacks" are notoriously tough individuals in my game, precisely because they are essentially mini-adventurers by profession. Adventures don't get hired to kill the giant rats in the cellar because it's a common enough problem there is a profession for that.

 

[el-remmen]

I prefer a setting that leans towards the grounded, where the PCs (and some NPCs) are the special ones. Yes, people know magic exists, but it should remain "magical" and be about exploring the contradictory seeming mysteries of the cosmos by different means, not as a codifiable set of universal laws that anyone can apply and that becomes just another form of technology.

I lean into cultural taboos and historical customs to explain behavior. Most people you run into are human. Most of the crazy earth-shattering magic is in the past and the state of the world and attitudes are based on those cataclysmic past events and how they might still effect the world (like an ongoing ecological disaster).

I do still like some weird cultural things. For example in the setting I am working now, which is set in a Republic based loosely on Ancient Greece and Rome (with a dash of the Iroquois Confederacy), the Constitution (also known as the Charter of Peers) establishes that everyone owns their own body. This has led to a custom of making arrangements to sell your corpse upon death so your family can benefit - and the corpses are used to make candles and wigs and soap, etc - leading to an industry around this. Of course, this would also be great cover for a secret necromancer building a zombie army or using bodies to feed some monster they are raising, or a ton of other adventure possibilities I have not considered yet.

These two things (a democratic republic, corpse value) make the setting distinct from most D&D worlds. Another thing is the PCs meet a lot of "slaves." They are indentured servants whose contracts are owned by the State and then rented out to various private individual and companies, or used to perform State projects. They are citizens whose living expenses are paid (and those of their children), have a limit of 7 years on their service, but also have suspended voting rights during that time. They have rights that protect them and a portion of the judiciary meant to look over how they are treated. Different PCs have different feelings about this and different factions in the setting seek to abolish, reform, or reinforce more draconian rules around this.

I personally don't want a train system run by genies trapped in engines or whatever and I don't think I could do a setting like that justice or even remember to reinforce that fantasticalness. I'd rather it be that truly fantastical things are either things the PCs are hunting for or are the threat to be stopped when they emerge.

I would would run a fantastical world of all humans (and would prefer that) before one of every kind of fantasy people you could think of being equally available.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Yes. This is something Gygaxian D&D considered very little, and more recent versions of D&D didn't consider at all, with the result that if you take the magic in the setting seriously, then global economies should look radically different from what is portrayed in D&D source books. The setting becomes really difficult to imagine as there are so many things magic just should be the answer for giving the claimed availability of magic in the setting.

It wasn't ever (to my recollection) stated outright, but the inference I got from TSR-era A/D&D was that answer to all questions about the fantastical reshaping the gameworld were answered significantly by rarity. Magical light did not replace torches and lamps because magic users were rare, took a lot of training, and didn't get better at magic use by casting continual light everywhere the local movers&shakers would want them to. Castles were still open-air affairs* in a world full of dragons and griffons because such creatures were incredibly rare -- sufficient that it was more efficient to call in adventurers when they did pop up than to completely rebuild castle design. And so on. *perhaps more ballista on towers than IRL.

There certainly are advantages to the model. Despite all the posts in the thread saying (in effect) 'I don't care how fantastic things are, I just want the world to make sense from whatever premise it starts with,' I think there is a large subset of gamers that want 'the middle-ages*, but with the supernatural being real, but not the complete reshaping of the world that that would imply.' Scarce and non-productionalizable gives you that (mostly). *or some varyingly-accurate depiction of them

This has to be a recent edition problem because I can never remember this as a problem. There were always two types of oil - lamp oil which was assumed to be some sort of vegetable oil or other liquid fat (and was relatively cheap, say about $10 a vial) and flaming oil which was assumed to be some sort of rare alchemical product or distillate ("Greek Fire") probably some sort of petroleum product and which was quite expensive (about $1875 a vial).

So far as I can tell, Greek Fire is an AD&D 2nd edition invention. oD&D had (officially) just the line that "Burning oil will deter many monsters from continuing pursuit," but quickly had weaponized oil as unofficial behavior*. AD&D had one type of oil, and rules (DMG, p64-65) for both burning oil as a barrier and as a missile weapon, and considered it enough a part of the game that it, alongside poison, was part of the charts about which classes would use which items/tactics. The basic/classic line undoubtedly varies by version, but checking Mentzer I see it too has oil as both barrier and missile weapon, with only one type of oil as an option. *such that Supplement I had as part of a suggestion about mixing up monsters to address player knowledge: "Fire-resistant mummies. Many players will get used to frying these monsters with oil. but watch the fun when they run into one of these critters!"