How Fantastical Do You Like Your Fantasy World?

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I also want the world to have grit. The sort of fantastic I do not want is plastic-feeling pristine shininess. I like the juxtaposition of fantastic and mundane. Like I want a floating sky fortress with wyvern riders in their battle-worn and weathered armour, and then some poor sod shovelling wyvern naughty word off the flying island. I want fantastic that nevertheless feels real.

That's a point of difference between us. For me, a major reason to have fantastic elements is to cater to the escapist fantasy of a more glamorous world, one with less of the grit and "dung age realism" that I find depressing.

Also, as an aesthetic preference, I want to avoid the feel of a low-tech world with imported bits of high-tech, even when the "high tech bits" are actually indigenous magical effects.

 

[Bae'zel]

Another thought: a classic trope of storytelling (universally) is "protagonist(s) live their life, something changes in their day to day life, conflict happens".

That can happen in any setting, really, regardless of degree of fantasy. As long as there's a meaningful "something changes in a significant way that creates some kind of conflict" I'm in.

 

[billd91]

I like it to feel grounded with a few dashes of fantastic because that makes things more relatable and predictable to my players. For example, I like my castles to still be castles because magic and beasts that negate most of the defenses are still rare enough that they are expensive to exploit on a regular basis.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

I think that kind of speaks to how much of a missed opportunity oWoD Revised was.

Honestly they should have pivoted the exact opposite direction to the one they did pivot to with Revised. Like, my experience isn't identical to yours, but it is roughly in line and I think, honestly, from all the people I spoke to (offline and on) and played with in that era, that vast, vast majority of people playing TT oWoD (as opposed to LARP) were playing basically "Trenchcoats and Katanas" or "Superheroes with fangs". But the stubborn people in charge of White Wolf at the time decided to pivot in the exact opposite direction, and attempted to essentially delete those two playstyles (and also to delete the "Anne Rice-esque sexy vampires"-playstyle! They seemed to hate that even more!) in favour of pushing the game towards primarily body-horror and social-horror with Revised (before kind of regretting it and shamefacedly making a new WoD: Combat or w/e and so on).

Part of the problem was that oWoD always had a bad foundation for promoting the human aspects of their characters, because from the get-go it generally treated them as weaknesses or used them to punish the players (and I do mean players, not PCs) for stuff. They should have focused on the human elements giving you strength rather than making them a point of weakness. They clearly thought of this, but in practical terms it just wasn't true. I think you could have kind of had both power conflicts AND humanity be important if you angled humanity and connection to others as strength, but whilst most oWoD games nodded at that, I don't think it was actually true in any of them.

And realistically as you illustrate most players wanted faction conflicts and superpowers (and even you wanted to something truly wacky and cool and rare - a wereraven), and frankly, White Wolf should have given it to them. Had Revised doubled-down on the gonzo ideas, conflicts and wild supernatural aspects of oWoD, rather than attempting to downplay them and focus on body-horror and a millennium-linked apocalypse and the like, I think it would have been so successful nWoD would never have been needed (not that I dislike nWoD, it's mostly cool, mostly), and it would probably still be a major force today (which I do not think it is, to be clear).

 

[cranberry]

I prefer my worlds/setting to be fairly mundane and "normal" from the perspective of the "common" folk.

Introduction to the fantastical occurs as the characters level up.

That is, I think the fantastical should be somewhat rare, something to work for and achieve.

If everyone and their uncle can caste cantrips or wield a +1 sword, the fantastical becomes normal and mundane.

"If everyone is a superhero, then no one is."

 

[Bae'zel]

And realistically as you illustrate most players wanted faction conflicts and superpowers (and even you wanted to something truly wacky and cool and rare - a wereraven), and frankly, White Wolf should have given it to them. Had Revised doubled-down on the gonzo ideas, conflicts and wild supernatural aspects of oWoD, rather than attempting to downplay them and focus on body-horror and a millennium-linked apocalypse and the like, I think it would have been so successful nWoD would never have been needed (not that I dislike nWoD, it's mostly cool, mostly), and it would probably still be a major force today (which I do not think it is, to be clear).

Funny thing: the Storyteller at the time encouraged us to pick unconventional shape changers. I chose Corax (was a big fan of the Crow in those days). But... the expanded shape shifting races were not "wacky" enough. My Corax was the most mundane, actually. We had a Were Eagle (Corax as a base, but with stronger combat abilities), a Mokole T-Rex and a Were Chinchilla (offshoot of were rat, but more magic).

My Football (soccer) obsessed Welsh heroin junkie on the run from the UK authorities, while lamenting the death of his girlfriend and unborn child was the LEAST wacky of the characters in that campaign.

Yeah.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My Football (soccer) obsessed Welsh heroin junkie on the run from the UK authorities, while lamenting the death of his girlfriend and unborn child was the LEAST wacky of the characters in that campaign.

Sounds like a late 1990s oWoD character alright! The abortive Mage: The Awakening campaign I tried to run at uni in 1997/1998 featured several such.

 

[DragonLancer]

For many years, nay decades, my concept of the perfect D&D setting was Middle Earth. I'd point people to that and then the Peter Jackson films. Middle Earth with a few more monsters perhaps. I was always of the view that the best setting was very medieval with some fantastical elements. Cities and large kingdoms might have something fantastical, but in rural towns and villages people could go their entire lives or even a couple generations without seeing anything monstrous or supernatural.

That was my thing, and it's why I could never get into the magic as technology approach of something like Eberron. However, since the release of Arcane I have found myself inspired by that show and aspects of the League of Legends setting. That coloured my new homebrew setting I have written coming back to D&D with 2024 edition. My taste has changed to more fantastical but not still not magic as technology. People still have to grow crops, ride horses not griffons, airships / ironclads are seen but not overly common place...etc. I think it surprised my players this time around as they were not used to it from me, and has made the game better.

So these days I'd say still grounded but with more of a fantastical edge that I used to go with.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

its just not where my creative GM energy lies

Yeah I think realizing where your creative energy lies is pretty important as a DM.

For me, I know that there are two places I am very good at just quickly coming up with stuff for, where I am like, "naturally creative", and those are:

A) Basically "Mass Effect zone" sci-fi. Even before Mass Effect, the sort of area between military sci-fi and Star Trek was where I was and remain extremely comfortable. Unfortunately weirdly few TTRPGs occupy this space, mostly they're on either side of it, either being Star Wars-esque space fantasy, or on the other side, hard-SF-adjacent traders and mercs stuff like Traveller (which y'know could be seen as a proto-ME, but I don't think it usually plays out that way).

B) Higher-magic full-integrated fantasy. Not like, "high fantasy" or "epic fantasy" necessarily, but fantasy settings where magic is part of everyday life, like you'd probably see something "magical" most weeks at least, if not most days. Like, Eberron or Planescape for me is relatively comfortable in a way that, say, Westeros would not be. I'm not Mr Politics/Mr Intrigue either. Backstabbing and betrayal and misleading people and so on, I can do all that, but elaborate Machiavellian schemes? I'm not really into it. Or more to the point, I'm not good at coming up with them!

(It's funny of course because my players often read Machiavellian schemes into innocent NPCs, but I think most DMs have to deal with that!)

C) Silver Age comics supers, also pulp supers stuff. I don't even know why! I'm not even like, into that, generally speaking! But I'm relatively great (imho) at making stuff up for it as compared to the eras of supers stuff I'm actually interested in! Quite frustrating lol! My players aren't really into that either.

But maybe this should be a different thread?

 

[payn]

Yeah I think realizing where your creative energy lies is pretty important as a DM.

For me, I know that there are two places I am very good at just quickly coming up with stuff for, where I am like, "naturally creative", and those are:

A) Basically "Mass Effect zone" sci-fi. Even before Mass Effect, the sort of area between military sci-fi and Star Trek was where I was and remain extremely comfortable. Unfortunately weirdly few TTRPGs occupy this space, mostly they're on either side of it, either being Star Wars-esque space fantasy, or on the other side, hard-SF-adjacent traders and mercs stuff like Traveller (which y'know could be seen as a proto-ME, but I don't think it usually plays out that way).

Traveller has always split the difference there. You have trillion credit squadron where its all capital ships and battle armor and entire nights of rolling dice in a single battle like a wargame. Then, you have a ragtag group on the edge of space being Firefly before Firefly was a thing. Not a ton connecting those things or bridging the difference.

I know you dropped a thread on Mass effect RPGs, did you ever come up with one you like best for it?