What is in YOUR ideal fantasy setting?

[Tinker Gnome]

So, what is in your ideal fantasy setting? For mine, I like a bit of everything. I also like to stray a bit from traditional fantasy and add in some wacky Sci-Fi stuff. Like maybe a futuristic space station that floats above the world wth all kinds of aliens and stuff. But the world below has to invoke a sense of wonder in me as well.

 

[LazerPointer]

Any setting that invokes the wonder I feel when I read Tolkein. It doesn't have to be like Middle Earth, just have memorable settings/peoples/situations.

 

[ArcOfCorinth]

Very low magic with a sense of pining for better days. The bards sing of a past where magic ran free like water. Sages tell of wasteful mages and a grieving god of spells. Rumors whisper of ways to bring magic back to the world...and murmurs speak of a dragon seeking to devour anyone who tries.

 

[Piratecat]

Monkeys. Poison monkeys with fangs and cool prehensile tails. I love those.

 

[Jeph]

A sense of wonder. Everything else is window dressing.

 

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Monkeys. Poison monkeys with fangs and cool prehensile tails. I love those.

Heh - now that's entertainment. No doubt their species enemy is a race of one-eyed felinoid privateers?

I have to agree with all the posts so far: it's the sense of wonder.

I can only articulate it as that feeling I once had after first playing the game, but before ever reading the Monster Manual or the Dungeon Master's Guide.

This can be recaptured somewhat by "filing off the serial numbers", e.g., take a kobold from the MM, give it a different name and looks and maybe buff it up a little.... perhaps make it simian and hirsute, and give it an additonal poison attack...

Seriously, though, for me it's not the genre, the content or the specifics that would make an ideal fantasy setting. I suppose one could write up a laundry list of favorite components and features, or even make up a "sacred cow" list, but I'd want that sense of wonder, and of course, a top-quality piece of work for my forty bucks.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Ninjas flipping out and killing people.

Well, that and a sense that the world around the characters is real and things happen whether the party shows up or not. Politics, wars, events going on out of the character's sphere of operations, even the impact of adventures of other parties. I love a good backdrop.

 

[Nightfall]

Scarred Lands, no contest. Midnight and Dawnforge come in second.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Scarred Lands, no contest.

So, what is in your ideal fantasy setting is your ideal fantasy setting? Isn't that circular?

 

[Desdichado]

My ideal changes from year to year. Right now, it's gritty and low magic, but high on swashbuckling action and crazy, fantastic set pieces.