How Fantastic?

[The Ghost]

I happen to prefer a much more mundane game. I like the game to feel like it really is medieval Europe with a little magic, and some monsters. I find that when I keep the overall setting fairly mundane, that that enhances the fantastical nature of things like dragons, magic, etc.

 

[Mallus]

Our group's new 4e homebrew setting is fairly fantastical. The 'world' is a strip of land, about 100 miles wide on average which that sits between the Aster (Astral) Sea and a vast, panoramic landscape called the Interior, which is the inside of the Creator God's mind. This is all that's left of the World Before, which was destroyed in a magical apocalypse.

The action takes place in the Port, which contains pieces of all the port cities of the World Before, where ships from across the Astral Sea come to trade. It's a place where a child's nursery rhyme sometimes becomes a ritual that brings the dead back to life, where new god's wash up on shore or drift down from rivers in the Interior, where the difference between life and death itself is frequently less than you expect.

So far it's been a lot of fun.

 

[Chainsaw]

I happen to prefer a much more mundane game. I like the game to feel like it really is medieval Europe with a little magic, and some monsters. I find that when I keep the overall setting fairly mundane, that that enhances the fantastical nature of things like dragons, magic, etc.

Totally agree. I prefer a Conan style world - gritty, magic is rare and not always to be trusted (no lightning rails), monsters and monstrous races exist, but are also rare (they're not walking around town haggling over the price of an apple, playing ball with the stree kids, etc). PCs encounter monsters more often than commoners do of course, due to the nature of their work.

Having said that, I remember running one 2E campaign where my PCs didn't encounter a non-human (or elf/dwarf) threat until around 3rd level. Monsters really seemed monstrous and mysterious in that campaign, heh. I suppose some people might find that boring, but the storyline was good and no one complained at all. Plus when they finally did run into something monstrous, it had quite a dramatic effect.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

If ultra-high fantasy, or even sci-fantasy is your cup of tea, then 4th edition is definitely the best choice for your game.

These elements have been included as a part of the core, default setting. Influences from Azeroth (a very sci-fantasy setting) are incredibly obvious. Much of the character art and especially weaponry look like they were generated from suped-up screen shots of the game.

 

[The Green Adam]

Allow me to disagree w/that. Scarcity alone can't make something fantastic, exciting or interesting. While the character may never have encountered such a thing before, the player probably has in some form or other (this is why a typical D&D +1 sword can never really be mysterious or impressive to experienced players).

A talking cat can be fantastic --which to say it's interesting-- if it has something interesting to say or does an interesting thing. It can also be dull as dishwater, if it's played that way, regardless of the in-game context. Boring is boring.

I won't disagree with you in principle but what I was referring to wasn't scarcity per se but immersion into a world setting. In a world setting where things are primarily a reflection of actual conditions and events in medieval Europe, the sudden appearance of something as simple as what I described will certainly catch a player's attention.

It isn't unusual for me to run an Ars Magica adventure where the players are told of a haunted ruin only to discover its 'haunted' by a gang of crafty and enterprising brigands and a charlatan. In another outing the players investigate a bandit waylaying travelers on a road and discover not a simple bandit by a giant or mythic beast. It keeps them on their toes and makes them rethink standard D&D reactions to monsters.

My main D&D world is a very 'advanced' place, with light spell street lamps, dozens of sentient, adventuring species, airships and a hole in the world's northern sea. The thing is, I don't think of this world as a medieval fantasy world. Its so fantastic its more akin to a magical Star Wars or an alternate reality fantasy game like Talislanta.

AD

 

[Jhaelen]

I happen to prefer a much more mundane game. I like the game to feel like it really is medieval Europe with a little magic, and some monsters. I find that when I keep the overall setting fairly mundane, that that enhances the fantastical nature of things like dragons, magic, etc.

I really dig Ars Magica's Mythic Europe setting. It's one of my favorites.

But for D&D Darksun has been my favorite. D&D has always been a better fit for highly fantastic settings.

Still, there is one problem I have with overly fantastic settings:
They only seem fantastic for the players, not for the characters. They've grown up in this world after all, so for them there's nothing out of the ordinary. This results in a certain disconnect that can cause problems in actual play.

So it's better to use the fantastic elements sparingly. That way they can be fantastic for the characters, as well.

Imho, in the 4E implied setting the fantastic elements are explained pretty well by the cosmology.

 

[Mercurius]

How fantastic do you like your fantasy games to be? Me? I love stuff like Floating Continents, or even a Palace located high in the mountains is cool. I like the strange and weird. A city which is floating in the middle of space as stellar winds buffet it and move it across space and where everything is made of crytsal and glows? Awesome!

If you don't know about Talislanta then you should: It is probably the best "exotic" fantasy RPG setting out there (and the d20-esque "Omni System" is nice, too).

As for me, I like the gamut. However, when there is just something about traditional D&D fantasy for role-playing. I like exotic races, I like fantastical locations, but I tend to prefer a game (and a novel) where those are used as accents, as special occurences rather than the norm--they are just more impressive that way. At the least, I like having a relatively "cozy" home base that the further you go from, the more exotic it gets. This is along the lines of the archetypal "off the farm" fantasy story: You start in Hobbiton and you end up in Mordor; you start in Gont and you end up in the land of the dead; etc.