D&D General Eberron: With magic standing in for tech, why would the world still look so much like our own? Ruminations through the lens of Ursula K. Le Guin

[earthsea_wizard]

I'm a huge fan of hers. First, her works have serious literary quality, the only fantasy novels I have read on par with Lord of the Rings in terms of style, themes, and prosody. Second, so much of modern fantasy is lifted from her works, people don't even realize it. Things like "good" dragons, true name magic, magic schools (by this I mean bot magical academies and categories of magic), and other fantasy staples first appeared in fantasy fiction form in her works. Third, her world-building is masterful, the best I have ever read. The Left Hand of Darkness really made me feel as if I had taken a trip to another planet.

Agreed. For me I put Le Guin, Frank Herbert and Tolkien in the same boat when it comes to style, prose, theme and world-building. They are my holy trinity of the fantastical.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They didn't even really bother to do a big "what if" about anything at all in the world.

The assumption is the player characters are from this world. It’s familiar and unsurprising to them, so it needs to be familiar and unsurprising to the players (who generally don’t spend their time studying setting books). That’s why D&D settings depend so much on tropes. If you want to do a setting that is unfamiliar to the players, you need to do portal fantasy, plane hopping, spelljamming or some such so that the setting is as unfamiliar to the characters as it is to the players.

 

[Barner Cobblewood]

What makes Le Guin's work stand out IYO?

She loves every character in her books.

 

[Piperken]

...So, please educate me. What makes Le Guin's work stand out IYO? How could that be used in D&D or even more specifically Eberron?

Small note in addition to bigger works mentioned, it's definitely worth reading her short stories as well e.g. "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow," and the like.