Beyond High Fantasy

[John Q. Mayhem]

I DMed a very fun, but dissapointingly short Western-style game in Eberron. I used the dusty frontier between Droaam and Breland.

I'd postulate that a lot of S&S fantasy is merely westerns with swords.

Merely???

 

[The Cardinal]

How about some Post-Apocalypse/Fantasy crossover?
Not just "WWIII/The Super-Plague/The BIG Asteroid/etc. came, destroyed civilization but brough the magic back", but rather this:
A high fantasy world, filled to the brim with sentient races, glorious empires, elven forests, dwarven mines, evil liches and shining heroes is destroyed in some global, probably magical, disaster. Now the ragged survivors, many of them thrown back to bronze age technology at best, crawl from the ruins to re-discover a world full of ruined cities, magical mutants, weird cults, and mysterious artifacts. The old gods don't answer prayers anymore, the elves have vanished or mutated, dragons are just legends now or have changed into something unrecognizeable, and magic as a science is almost completely lost...

 

[Sigg]

How about some Post-Apocalypse/Fantasy crossover?
Not just "WWIII/The Super-Plague/The BIG Asteroid/etc. came, destroyed civilization but brough the magic back", but rather this:
A high fantasy world, filled to the brim with sentient races, glorious empires, elven forests, dwarven mines, evil liches and shining heroes is destroyed in some global, probably magical, disaster. Now the ragged survivors, many of them thrown back to bronze age technology at best, crawl from the ruins to re-discover a world full of ruined cities, magical mutants, weird cults, and mysterious artifacts. The old gods don't answer prayers anymore, the elves have vanished or mutated, dragons are just legends now or have changed into something unrecognizeable, and magic as a science is almost completely lost...

Sounds like Dragonlance to me.

 

[Estlor]

Another good source for that fantasy/western feel is the Savage Coast/Savage Baronies area from Mystara. Also kind of has the 'Zorro' vibe as well. A good setting, could provide loads of inspiration and elements to yoink for your own campaign.

Ding! We have a winner! Of course, if you want all-out western feel, you have to stay mostly in Cimmaron County. If you start to go back to the east you get more of a Portugal and Spanish Inquisition feel to the setting. Go further west and you get some French, some Imperial English, and eventually Creole and Aboriginal feelings.

It's a dern fine setting. If you don't want the Red Curse aspect, just drop it and delete the Inheritors. Things still play fairly well.

 

[The Cardinal]

Sounds like Dragonlance to me.

DL is post-apocalypse?????? Without elves & dragons (unless heavily mutated)? Full of ruined cities & (magical) mutants?

 

[Teemu]

DL is post-apocalypse?????? Without elves & dragons (unless heavily mutated)? Full of ruined cities & (magical) mutants?

Yes, after the 1st cataclysm.

A high fantasy world, filled to the brim with sentient races, glorious empires, elven forests, dwarven mines, evil liches and shining heroes is destroyed in some global, probably magical, disaster.

The 'flaming mountain' sent by the gods.

Now the ragged survivors, many of them thrown back to bronze age technology at best, crawl from the ruins to re-discover a world full of ruined cities, magical mutants, weird cults, and mysterious artifacts.

Not to mention seas where land used to exist

The old gods don't answer prayers anymore, the elves have vanished or mutated, dragons are just legends now or have changed into something unrecognizeable, and magic as a science is almost completely lost...

No divine magic, elves as reclusive as never before, all dragons gone, arcane magic feared and used by only a few.

 

[Whisper72]

Well... DL IS post-apocalypse (remember the Cataclysm???), and dragons were absent from the world, and elves had retreated into their own realms in such a way as to be absent from the world in any real terms...

Depends upon how/when you play in DL I suppose, but if you played in the time shortly after the Cataclysm, then DL could definately fit the bill quite nicely, except for the radioactivity....

 

[Desdichado]

I guess I should have been more clear about that in my initial post. I was talking, not about fantasy settings inspired by other genres, but about fantasy settings that actually focus on showcasing tropes of those other genres (e.g., in the case of Westerns, gun/spell fighters, a totally lawless frontier, PC races being the minority in that frontier region, etc).

In other words: Deadlands, or Stephen King's Dark Tower stories.

My own most recent homebrew was quite a departure from standard D&D and High Fantasy; I called it a combination in more or less equal parts of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom, the Cthulhu Mythos, and steampunk. The games themselves ended up playing like plots that were ripped off from Robert Ludlum, though.

 

[Aris Dragonborn]

How about some Post-Apocalypse/Fantasy crossover?
Not just "WWIII/The Super-Plague/The BIG Asteroid/etc. came, destroyed civilization but brough the magic back", but rather this:
A high fantasy world, filled to the brim with sentient races, glorious empires, elven forests, dwarven mines, evil liches and shining heroes is destroyed in some global, probably magical, disaster. Now the ragged survivors, many of them thrown back to bronze age technology at best, crawl from the ruins to re-discover a world full of ruined cities, magical mutants, weird cults, and mysterious artifacts. The old gods don't answer prayers anymore, the elves have vanished or mutated, dragons are just legends now or have changed into something unrecognizeable, and magic as a science is almost completely lost...

Fantasy/Post-Apocalypse: Dark Legacies from Red Spire Press. A dark, grim and gritty, low-magic world, with just a wee bit of steampunk thrown in. The world has just gone through the Reversion - literally to Hell and (half-way) back. No dragons, small elven population (the eldrin), demons, repeaters (crossbows), one magic-using class (the Arcanist, who risks taint and insanity with every spell he casts, because magic uses demonic energy), the Priest (no divine magic; instead uses the Voice, sorta like the Weirding Way from Dune), and just lots of element that combine together to make the setting dark (and I do mean dark). The tech isn't really bronze-age (a lot more advanced), but I think this fits the bill.

You could probably buy d20 Apocalypse and just use the elements there to build your own PA/Fantasy setting. Hmmm....

 

[ssampier]

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is fantasy/noire?

Mine is fairly "by the book", but I include some interesting background and some magic-technology from Mechamancy.