What Setting Elements Do You Enjoy In A "Fanstasy" World?

[Max_Killjoy]

Taking a bit of inspiration from the 'What gameplay elements do you enjoy" thread, and from Yora and I talking about our work on settings that eschew the "standard" Medieval Eurasia Mashup elements...

What really gets you interested in a setting?

What would you like to more of? Especially things you don't see enough of.

What settings really stand out to you as great for fantasy-genre RPGs, and why?

[Quertus]

In short, I care about the style (the depth, breadth, and university) & delivery of the content much more than the specifics of the content itself.

Spoiler: long version

Show

These are very different questions for me. Let me answer the (IMO) most important: What really gets me interested in a setting?

Well, I'll open with something that is the opposite of what you like: incompleteness. I want things that have not been explored, not taken to their logical conclusion yet. I want D&D invisibility... And guards who act like they're unaware of its existence. I don't want a world created by and for the Determinator, I want (what might seem to you like idiot balls aplenty, but is actually) novelty of capability and not yet evolved societal responses.

I want a world capable of change. Because I want to change the world.

What else?

NPCs worth engaging with. If you want me to connect with the world, make NPCs that I'll connect with.

Exploraton. I want new things that I have to think about (like my classic example of rocks floating through the air). Correction - that I can think about, not that I have to.

I want... Hmmm... Plug & play stuff. Not "here's X, here's what X is obviously used for", but "here's X, and, 20 years from now, you'll still come up with a new use for X (perhaps when applying it to Y for the first time, or perhaps because X is just that cool).

Combat as War. Failure needs to be an option, and what we do has to be able to change the outcome. Why would I get invested in a world, if it's obvious where it is going? Why would I get invested in an NPC if the GM has already decided what their role is, whether and how they'll die, etc. Why would I get invested in using floating rocks to gain a combat / logistics / whatever advantage, if the GM was just going to change the opposition / challenges to maintain parity?

What else?

The only good monolithic NPC power is a dead monolithic NPC power. Don't give us gods unless we get to kill them.

The only good plot hook is one that we can ignore. World-ending threat? Better give us a way off-world.

Give us the tools to learn, not the knowledge. I hate Knowledge skills; I love senses / Detect spells.

Communicate what the characters perceive, and do so correctly. Correct any misunderstandings, but don't force a conclusion / a particular understanding of the data.

That seems like a good list to follow to get me to care about a setting. Make it worth my time to think and to care. Anything you do beyond that is just extra.

[Slipperychicken]

What gets me interested is thinking about the kinds of gameplay and stories I'm likely to see there. So in that sense, I'm almost looking more for a campaign pitch than a world alone.

[White Blade]

I like anthropological realism in extraordinary settings. Religions need to have gods people would worship, political bodies need to have polities that people would actually participate in. People need to be driven by a recognizable mixture of fear and transcendence, and I dislike overly pessimistic assessments of human nature.

I love sweeping and powerful magic and I hate the players having too much of it. I want there to be an element of wonder in everything. In public settings, I like there to be a pretty rich variety of options for play, what the kobold's world builder's guide called "lots of dynamite" - A bunch of different, interesting hooks.

In terms of things I don't see, I want more fantasy settings with less monarchist and reactionary bents. I'd like settings with a deeper sense of affection for humanity.

[Thinker]

What really gets you interested in a setting?
I get more interested in settings that include strong mythological overtones. I want capricious gods who are worshiped, not because they're "good", but because you don't want the sea to swallow your ship when you travel to the capital. You don't sacrifice your goat because it's the right thing to do, but because you want to ensure a good harvest this year. I want there to be wars between the gods (or for there to have been) - Troy, the Gods versus the Giants, Tuatha and Fomorians, etc.

I also like settings that include strong folklore elements. Creatures/phenomena don't have to be specifically from real world folklore, but I want the Forest Shade to be whispered about by the townsfolk. I want there to be a elder who saw it once in his youth, but survived only losing a hand who tells anyone who will listen about his ordeal. I want the players to be the ones who confront this shade and for this one creature to take all of their resources and ingenuity to defeat.

I enjoy settings without other playable humanoid races. Other beings should be alien, hard to communicate with, and harder to understand their motivations. Going to the Elf King for aid should be a dangerous proposition because you might not even be sure if the Elf King cares about the orcs ravaging the country side.

I'm also a sucker for mysteries. Give me a mysterious, ancient evil any day.

Modern fantasy. I know that masquerades and things are ridiculous and unlikely, but I like mixing magic with the modern world. Typically, this is through some cataclysm or reawakening to make it work.

What would you like to more of? Especially things you don't see enough of.

• Interventionist gods
• Folklore presentation
• Unexplored areas - though, this has gotten better in recent years
• Pre-apocalypse - Most fantasy settings deal with post-golden age gameplay. I want to see worlds before the fall where there aren't any dungeons because they're still under construction.

What settings really stand out to you as great for fantasy-genre RPGs, and why?

• Exalted - The game's mechanics have a lot of problems, but the setting is great. Players are demigods in a world where the gods are distracted, but their presence is still felt throughout the world. The other sentient creatures are dangerous because they're alien. There are mysteries and conspiracies, and the feel of the setting is truly epic. It feels the closest to a mythological world of any setting/game I've played.
• Shadowrun - This game had some decent mechanics, but the rules are too heavy at times and too many of the systems are disassociated. That said, the cyberpunk world with elves, orcs, and so on is cool. I can stomach these fantasy races better because they're essentially the output of humans meeting magical radiation.
• Hyboria - I'm not sure if this is the best name for it, but basically the setting of Conan the Barbarian. I enjoy sword and sorcery and the setting is certainly geared toward that. There are vast, unexplored areas of the world, some never touched by humans.
• Greyhawk/Dragonlance/Forgotten Worlds - Basic fantasy settings have their place and it's fun to sometimes not have to think too much about how the world works. Everyone already knows what elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. are when playing in these worlds (and they're really interchangeable). My current weekly game is a generic fantasy setting, which really reduces the amount of explaining for the players.

[Cazaril]

Religious realism is a big one for me. I get frustrated by fantasy settings that have religious systems that are too simplified, or which seem unnatural, or where the religion isn't deeply entwined with the culture. In human history, there has been no major society in which religion wasn't an integral part of their society -- and generally, those religions are complex.

One of my main gripes is the "one big pantheon" model: there's a god for the elves, a god for the dwarves, a god for healers, a god for warriors, etc... and everyone apparently just venerates whichever of those gods best fits their life situation. I can't think of any real religious system that works that way. A Norseman wouldn't just say "my god is Thor" and ignore the rest of the pantheon. Plus, the people in the next town over will have a slightly different conception of the pantheon, and slightly different tales, and the people 100 miles away might have a related but totally distinct religious structure that sprang from a common root.

I guess the other attribute that I like is some level of theological uncertainty. If everyone agrees on what the gods are, and who they are, and on all the other major theological questions, there's no interesting religious tension. Gods are more fun when they're unknowable. If you zoom out to the whole continent, you could have monotheists, dualists, and polytheists of all stripes. When you get Hellenic and start layering state religion, philosophic religion, and mystery sects, that's when you really get my attention. Add in syncretism of old and new religions in areas of ethnic mixing, and the spread of new prophetic/messianic followings along major trade routes... that's the stuff.

[Max_Killjoy]

Religious realism is a big one for me. I get frustrated by fantasy settings that have religious systems that are too simplified, or which seem unnatural, or where the religion isn't deeply entwined with the culture. In human history, there has been no major society in which religion wasn't an integral part of their society -- and generally, those religions are complex.

One of my main gripes is the "one big pantheon" model: there's a god for the elves, a god for the dwarves, a god for healers, a god for warriors, etc... and everyone apparently just venerates whichever of those gods best fits their life situation. I can't think of any real religious system that works that way. A Norseman wouldn't just say "my god is Thor" and ignore the rest of the pantheon. Plus, the people in the next town over will have a slightly different conception of the pantheon, and slightly different tales, and the people 100 miles away might have a related but totally distinct religious structure that sprang from a common root.

I guess the other attribute that I like is some level of theological uncertainty. If everyone agrees on what the gods are, and who they are, and on all the other major theological questions, there's no interesting religious tension. Gods are more fun when they're unknowable. If you zoom out to the whole continent, you could have monotheists, dualists, and polytheists of all stripes. When you get Hellenic and start layering state religion, philosophic religion, and mystery sects, that's when you really get my attention. Add in syncretism of old and new religions in areas of ethnic mixing, and the spread of new prophetic/messianic followings along major trade routes... that's the stuff.

Totally agree -- both at the system level and at the "fiction" level, certain popular RPGs have contributed to entrenching a very stilted henotheistic approach ("yeah your god exists, but my god is the best god, your god can go suck lemons") that can also be seen in certain fictional works (see, the discussion between Conan and Subotai about their respective gods in the Conan movie). It feels very unnatural for a character in most of these game settings to be a dedicated follower of a single god -- rather, they should be praying to each god of the pantheon as it applies to their current situation or dilemma.

(We probably should avoid much more in the way of specific real-world references as much as possible, I don't want anyone to accidentally run afoul of the limits were under.)

What really gets you interested in a setting?
I get more interested in settings that include strong mythological overtones. I want capricious gods who are worshiped, not because they're "good", but because you don't want the sea to swallow your ship when you travel to the capital. You don't sacrifice your goat because it's the right thing to do, but because you want to ensure a good harvest this year. I want there to be wars between the gods (or for there to have been) - Troy, the Gods versus the Giants, Tuatha and Fomorians, etc.

I also like settings that include strong folklore elements. Creatures/phenomena don't have to be specifically from real world folklore, but I want the Forest Shade to be whispered about by the townsfolk. I want there to be a elder who saw it once in his youth, but survived only losing a hand who tells anyone who will listen about his ordeal. I want the players to be the ones who confront this shade and for this one creature to take all of their resources and ingenuity to defeat.

...

What would you like to more of? Especially things you don't see enough of.

• Interventionist gods
• Folklore presentation

Sorry to gut this part of your post out, but it seemed to tie into the subject of the above post.

Maybe I'm just a stickler for atmospheric elements, but I really wish the subject of religion in fantasy settings was treated with more depth, and things like you mention given more explicit detail. If you look at the deities and religions in my settings, it's exactly as you say -- there are no "good gods" and "evil gods", the deities are "the goddess of X" and "the goddess of Y", they're more interested in their "domain" and receiving proper veneration and adherence to strictures... cosmological Good and Evil don't even enter into it.

One of the reasons I get so tired of Alignment is that it contributes to making the "ancient polytheism" of those D&D settings not feel like polytheism at all.

[Thinker]

Sorry to gut this part of your post out, but it seemed to tie into the subject of the above post.

Maybe I'm just a stickler for atmospheric elements, but I really wish the subject of religion in fantasy settings was treated with more depth, and things like you mention given more explicit detail. If you look at the deities and religions in my settings, it's exactly as you say -- there are no "good gods" and "evil gods", the deities are "the goddess of X" and "the goddess of Y", they're more interested in their "domain" and receiving proper veneration and adherence to strictures... cosmological Good and Evil don't even enter into it.

One of the reasons I get so tired of Alignment is that it contributes to making the "ancient polytheism" of those D&D settings not feel like polytheism at all.

I think part of the reason that fantasy religions are so shallow is that making them in-depth is hard. The same goes for cultures. You get just enough to make a superficial character, but not enough to know what a week in that character's shoes really looks like. That's a sacrifice for game playability and resource allocation. No matter how well you write for your setting, most players aren't going to read far beyond the rules they need for their character. Most GMs won't read much past what they need to run the adventure.

That said, some of the superficial elements in RPG settings are dumb. You can just as easily run a world with pantheons, rather than individual gods for individual characters. There's no reason you couldn't include a calendar of holy days and/or festivals. You could add a list of common sacrifices or prayers without much effort. It would be hard to include all of the stories and context for those things though, especially for a setting that is being physically printed.

[Cazaril]

I think part of the reason that fantasy religions are so shallow is that making them in-depth is hard. The same goes for cultures. You get just enough to make a superficial character, but not enough to know what a week in that character's shoes really looks like. That's a sacrifice for game playability and resource allocation. No matter how well you write for your setting, most players aren't going to read far beyond the rules they need for their character. Most GMs won't read much past what they need to run the adventure.

That said, some of the superficial elements in RPG settings are dumb. You can just as easily run a world with pantheons, rather than individual gods for individual characters. There's no reason you couldn't include a calendar of holy days and/or festivals. You could add a list of common sacrifices or prayers without much effort. It would be hard to include all of the stories and context for those things though, especially for a setting that is being physically printed.

I guess the kicker is that you can only go in-depth with one or two world elements before you really start to lose your reader/players. So, you really have to pick what you care about. As a fantasy reader, I love religious nuance, and so I gravitate to books where the author has focused on that in their world-building (Bujold's World of the Five Gods books being a prime example). For the campaign world I've been idly building of late, I've chosen to go into a lot of detail as a world-builder on the setting's religious and ethnolinguistic history, because I find it fascinating and I want it to feel realistic. That said, I'm not kidding myself that my eventual players will feel the same way...

[Max_Killjoy]

I guess the kicker is that you can only go in-depth with one or two world elements before you really start to lose your reader/players. So, you really have to pick what you care about. As a fantasy reader, I love religious nuance, and so I gravitate to books where the author has focused on that in their world-building (Bujold's World of the Five Gods books being a prime example). For the campaign world I've been idly building of late, I've chosen to go into a lot of detail as a world-builder on the setting's religious and ethnolinguistic history, because I find it fascinating and I want it to feel realistic. That said, I'm not kidding myself that my eventual players will feel the same way...

I guess I'm just a setting junkie... I love those sorts of setting details, and if I like a fiction series I'll eagerly go out and buy a whole book of ephemera to go with it.

[Max_Killjoy]

I like anthropological realism in extraordinary settings. Religions need to have gods people would worship, political bodies need to have polities that people would actually participate in. People need to be driven by a recognizable mixture of fear and transcendence, and I dislike overly pessimistic assessments of human nature.

It's funny, a lot of settings have glossed over a lot of the downsides of living "in the past" or its equivalent, but when settings try to be "realistic", they almost always overshoot the mark by miles and present a sort of grimdork unintentional caricature, full of mud huts, boils, filthy hunchbacked serfs, and self-absorbed rapey lords and scheming ladies. And the cleaner the setting, the dirtier the people, see most depictions of Rome. So yeah, it would be nice to see more settings with a realistic construction but a more even-handed depiction of human nature.

I love sweeping and powerful magic and I hate the players having too much of it. I want there to be an element of wonder in everything. In public settings, I like there to be a pretty rich variety of options for play, what the kobold's world builder's guide called "lots of dynamite" - A bunch of different, interesting hooks.

I think there's a balance, a sort of "grounded sense of wonder" where things are possible, but breath-taking.

As for magic, it's always a struggle to give the magic much magic when it's long been treated as a sort of "great big box of super tools" by so many RPGs over the years. I want a world with magical magic, a sense of esoteric and spiritual, etc, but maybe that's only possible with fiction.

In terms of things I don't see, I want more fantasy settings with less monarchist and reactionary bents. I'd like settings with a deeper sense of affection for humanity.

Both my WIP settings, I've tried to vary the governments and cultures more, and allow room for people to be, if not good, at least descent.

[Max_Killjoy]

As an aside, Season 14 of the Writing Excuses podcast is all about worldbuilding.

https://writingexcuses.com/category/season/season-14/

[Mechalich]

It's funny, a lot of settings have glossed over a lot of the downsides of living "in the past" or its equivalent, but when settings try to be "realistic", they almost always overshoot the mark by miles and present a sort of grimdork unintentional caricature, full of mud huts, boils, filthy hunchbacked serfs, and self-absorbed rapey lords and scheming ladies. And the cleaner the setting, the dirtier the people, see most depictions of Rome. So yeah, it would be nice to see more settings with a realistic construction but a more even-handed depiction of human nature.

Most fantasy settings are a delivery vehicle for heroic (or at least high-octane) adventures. Most of the nasty realistic elements of pre-industrial societies are things like disease, widespread parasites, poor nutrition, poor hygiene, and dependency on unpredictable weather. None of these are easily adapted to stories about adventurers who run around slinging swords or spells, and even in stories that try to take on survival elements are in-willing to de-beautify the population in an appropriate way. Doubly so for any setting that exists in a primarily visual medium - for example even something like Dr. Stone, a manga that is explicitly about survival challenges, chooses to populate its primitive survivor populace with standard anime bombshells of both sexes.

As a consequence, when trying to produce 'grittiness' in a setting violence becomes the obvious alternative. This has been, notably, the case for centuries in literature. If you read The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which you should anyway if you haven't), you'll go through endless descriptions of battle after battle between the various warring factions rendered in luscious detail, but descriptions of disease and famine are mentioned briefly and in cursory ways when they are referenced at all.

As for human nature, well, the historical record really does suggest that "power corrupts" is a nearly universal truth and power struggles at the upper echelons of pretty much every large human society were (and to a reduced extent still are) extremely common. For example, very few of the world's nations can reliably date their founding to any time prior to 1800 CE (ostensibly, only 9, most of which are small and isolated such as Nepal and San Marino). Power struggles that split and destabilized states were extremely common. Also, life was legitimately cheaper in the ancient world. Infanticide, for instance, was apparently a quite common practice among just about everyone in the ancient world, and it was Abrahamic religious prohibitions on the practice that served to gradually mitigate it. And this was hardly a unique case.

Unfortunately, there's a tendency in fantasy for authors to put in historically accurate (or at least historically plausible) conditions, and then utilize viewpoint characters with a modern perspective who continuously condemn these practices despite them being well supported by the society and the ethics of the times. This makes everyone appear to be corrupt, even though most people are just being human while working from a different baseline.

I think there's a balance, a sort of "grounded sense of wonder" where things are possible, but breath-taking.

As for magic, it's always a struggle to give the magic much magic when it's long been treated as a sort of "great big box of super tools" by so many RPGs over the years. I want a world with magical magic, a sense of esoteric and spiritual, etc, but maybe that's only possible with fiction.

Balancing magic is one of the great challenges of setting design, and if the setting is intended to be used for an RPG wherein the players have access to the full capabilities of said magic it becomes an incredible difficult problem. Many settings, even very popular ones, don't even try. The Codex Alera, to name one, is ridiculously over-saturated with magic in a way that makes no sense whatsoever and Jim Butcher doesn't even try to develop plausible verisimilitude. He just slaps a faux-Roman gloss over everything and goes ahead throwing out battle scenes without stopping.

In a setting designed for fiction you can take the 'Hyborian Age' approach where magic is phenomenally powerful, but also sufficiently rare and confined to sufficiently remote locations that magic users aren't in a place to intervene in everyday life. Conan fights a lot of wizards, but they tend to live in isolated citadels where they breed snakes and stare into pools contemplating the mysteries of the universe rather than involve themselves in day to day politics. Once you allow wizard PCs that's just not viable anymore.

[2D8HP]

I like settings with Magic.

Humans are never naturally magicians.

Magic comes from Faerie and Hell.

Magic is power.

Magic has a price.

The price is life.

The price is madness.

The price is one's soul.

The price is the very nature of reality.

Demons and elementals are summoned to make magic, and for more poweful magic the magician must summon more powerful beings that need to be persuaded!

May demons just decide to eat them up yum-yum or rend your psyche and soul instead?

Yes.

What part of "secrets man was not meant to know" didn't you understand?!

Practicing magic is a dangerous act, otherwise every Tom, Rick, and witch Hazel would do it!

Magic as tool box "Levels to move the world" is LAME!

Magic should be more like fire, specifically hellfire!

Yes you may boil your tea (and incinerate your enemies!), but you run the risk of dooming yourself.

Now that's genre!

Good magicians (the few that they are) suffer for their spells, in the pain they feel, and in their shortened lifespans, and in tastes of madness.

Evil magicians try to make others pay the price (old AD&D had some rules like that for magic item creation), and/or they bring demons to earth for their power, most in time wind-up like René Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Yara in The Tower of the Elephant, but still there are those who crave power and call upon demons.

Heroes try to stop them.

"As flies to wanton boys, are we to thegods; they kill us for their sport"

Priests busy themselves and try to appease the gods so people are not cursed, but no Gandalfs, no Angels may heroes rely on, at best there's petty charms and small magic done by half-mad wizened shamen and wise-women, as more powerful sorceries come from Evil, and in the dark the world is polluted by monsters that were called to earth by old magics, which heroes must fight if humanity is to survive.

Between humanity, gods, and demons are the "Fair Folk" who"s power and fickleness make them creatures who's attention the wise try to avoid, and telling them apart from demons, gods, and magicians is difficult.

Much "Gameplay magic" is boring.

More magic users need to see Chaos/Helll brought to them, or they need to be brought into Chaos or down into Hell, or at least have their bodies warped into unhuman shapes, lose their shadows, voices, first born children, etc.

For example: in 5e D&D even the Warlock class has nice Fey they can get powers from, instead of amoral Fair Folk types!

Bah!

Secrets man was not meant to know should have a price in blood, sanity, and souls!

Dark Sun was the D&D setting that was closest to doing it right.

Needs more badass.

For hints of what I crave:

A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab,

The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi,

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson,

The Corum and the Elric books by Michael Moorcock,

Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke,

and

The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven.

[White Blade]

Most fantasy settings are a delivery vehicle for heroic (or at least high-octane) adventures. Most of the nasty realistic elements of pre-industrial societies are things like disease, widespread parasites, poor nutrition, poor hygiene, and dependency on unpredictable weather. None of these are easily adapted to stories about adventurers who run around slinging swords or spells, and even in stories that try to take on survival elements are in-willing to de-beautify the population in an appropriate way. Doubly so for any setting that exists in a primarily visual medium - for example even something like Dr. Stone, a manga that is explicitly about survival challenges, chooses to populate its primitive survivor populace with standard anime bombshells of both sexes.

As a consequence, when trying to produce 'grittiness' in a setting violence becomes the obvious alternative. This has been, notably, the case for centuries in literature. If you read The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which you should anyway if you haven't), you'll go through endless descriptions of battle after battle between the various warring factions rendered in luscious detail, but descriptions of disease and famine are mentioned briefly and in cursory ways when they are referenced at all.

As for human nature, well, the historical record really does suggest that "power corrupts" is a nearly universal truth and power struggles at the upper echelons of pretty much every large human society were (and to a reduced extent still are) extremely common. For example, very few of the world's nations can reliably date their founding to any time prior to 1800 CE (ostensibly, only 9, most of which are small and isolated such as Nepal and San Marino). Power struggles that split and destabilized states were extremely common. Also, life was legitimately cheaper in the ancient world. Infanticide, for instance, was apparently a quite common practice among just about everyone in the ancient world, and it was Abrahamic religious prohibitions on the practice that served to gradually mitigate it. And this was hardly a unique case.

Unfortunately, there's a tendency in fantasy for authors to put in historically accurate (or at least historically plausible) conditions, and then utilize viewpoint characters with a modern perspective who continuously condemn these practices despite them being well supported by the society and the ethics of the times. This makes everyone appear to be corrupt, even though most people are just being human while working from a different baseline.

I have a lot of historical counter-examples to... well, a lot of what you said. But what I was saying when I said that human nature is often undermined, I mean is that it is depicted as if everyone were simply pursuing their interests. This is not how people live their lives at all, the moment you give them space. What people want is, first of all, safety - But they also want to do good. If you see a suffering fellow human and you, yourself, are not suffering as badly you want to help that person. This is how beggars work. Fantasy settings often end up full of beggars but without any almsgivers, and I think that's just ignoring human nature as much as denying that power corrupts people.

[GaelofDarkness]

I've noticed there's two or three big things that I think stick out as to me when I'm reading or playing in a fantasy world - but what's important about all of them is that they are integrated into the world and provide the players an opportunity to interact with something that's unreal but maintain verisimilitude, not necessarily fantastical but usually it is. More than anything, they're about generating atypical conflicts.

1.
A strong foundation myth that more than establishing morality or even faith, establishes an understanding of how power is distributed in the world. Preferably with a fairly simple vibe, like you imagine this being told to children across realm. So this might establish a line of divine figures who gain great power from their bloodline or through reincarnation that are important in the world. This might establish why there are specific places of immense ritual power that are hidden or guarded - though usually both. This might set up why different kinds of power exist in the world and how they co-exist.

I think this is probably because I was raised on a bunch of videogames and they often have set-ups like this (the X goddesses left behind X artifacts that make up the MacGuffin) so there's a familiarity factor but I like how it can be executed in a setting with more depth by letting characters engage in the way power is structured. It's not about GETTING the MacGuffin, it's about understanding how the royal house's possession of one piece of the MacGuffin changes the politics and culture. There's plenty of room for applying anthropological realism here and getting a wide variety of experiences outside the norm.

The foundation myth is free to be a lie in service to the real power - either in propping up those who wish to rule or in keeping dangerous secrets hidden, etc.

2.
A very specific and WEIRD thing about the environment of the setting. This might be seasons that are alien to what we find in the real world. This might be tied to the flora or the fauna. This might be a way in which the geography is drastically different to our own realistic world. Maybe it's a magical effect that just happens. Whatever it is, I love to see how these change culture and behavior in the world's inhabitants and the players.

I experimented with a setting where anywhere that sophont creatures settled for a time, a "vestibule" would appear that was always full of basic food and water. Obviously this DRASTICALLY changes the way that societies organize themselves but it also meant that control over the vestibule was complete and irrefutable control. I ruled that agriculture still emerged but it was all about non-essential stuff - geared toward alcohol production, spices, herbs, perfumes instead of vegetables or fruit. It needs more work but it was nice to turn provisions into something that players could completely ignore until someone seized control of a vestibule and provisions became the only thing that mattered.

2.5/3
This is very similar to the second point but it's specifically when the people of the setting have a specific and WEIRD capability. This might be the result of fantastical physiology or some magical talent or an arcane technology. This might be common or rare. The reason I differentiate this from the former is that this is about people generating the source of conflict - not some aspect of nature or the divine.

The best example of this I can think of is not in an rpg but David Farland's Runelord books - especially the first couple. The endowments and dedicates are so fascinating. The idea that when the king dies, his "wits" would retain some of his memories between them was just such a cool idea. I didn't love the execution of the stuff about the personified elements (especially since it's the classical four) but an underlying conflict being less about good and evil and more about conflicting natural forces beyond moral concerns could've been more interesting.

[Yora]

What I really like in a fantasy setting is a sense of the world only being partly ruled by people, not being anywhere near completely explored, and having major mystical components that characters can encounter and experience, but whose true nature can never be understood.
It's particularly that last aspect that has become done well only very rarely. Fantasy culture has been on a big lore binge for the last 20 years or so (Jordan and Martin, I blame you!) and fans crave explanations and more details for everything. But that fails to understand that mystery and ambiguity are the key components to make anything feel magical. That doesn't excuse inconsistency and you can not fake it by making your work raise big questions for which you don't have any answers. When it's done well, the world and its stories are made with an understanding that some elements are outside of human comprehension. If the creator is all "Uh, don't you all wonder what's the explanation of all this?" without bothering to have any answer, it's BAD! That's the definition of being a hack. (I am looking at you, CC and JJ!)
Overexplaining things is what almost killed Dark Sun. One of the best decision Wizards ever made was to base 4th ed. Dark Sun only on the first box and ignore the second. And yeah, midichlorians. Just don't!

What we need more are spirits. We get D&D demons all the time, but D&D doesn't really have nature spirits and few worlds seem to do anything with it either.
I also like dinosaurs.

The best worlds are Star Wars, Dark Sun, and Morrowind. I don't have much to elaborate on that. They just are, and if you know them, you probably know why.

[Mechalich]

But that fails to understand that mystery and ambiguity are the key components to make anything feel magical.

Well, this is an opinion, and it appears to not be a popular one. Certainly it's one that I, personally, disagree with vociferously. The real world is magical and knowing how it works only makes it more so. Sending New Horizons to Pluto and resolving grainy Hubble images into glorious hi-def didn't make it less magical, it made it about one hundred times cooler. That's admittedly the scientist perspective, but a lot of the modern fantasy readership and RPG player base has a STEM background.

Opinions aside though, mystery and ambiguity are really, really hard in game design. You can be vague and atmospheric and undefined for dramatic effect when writing a novel and there are fantasy authors today who are very good at it - Guy Gavriel Kay would be first on my list - but it's much more difficult to do in a game, where every creature has to go into a Bestiary somewhere and have stats and defined abilities. Whatever level of detail your game system resolves at, you have to define everything to at least that level. That's why setting design for the purposes of telling a story is not the same as setting design for the purpose of running a game (at least, if there's any player agency at all, there are JRPGs out there where the player has precisely zero story input, looking at you Xenosaga).

What we need more are spirits. We get D&D demons all the time, but D&D doesn't really have nature spirits and few worlds seem to do anything with it either.

D&D has nature spirits, you can buy Pathfinder: Kingmaker and fight them a bunch if you want, it just doesn't have nature spirits that are functionally distinct from any other type of monster in a significant way. The fey type is basically just another form of extraplanar entity from a shiny and overgrown alternate dimension. The reductive nature of the game mechanics largely prohibits them from being truly different from anything else.

Outside of mechanics, doing nature spirits, and a 'world of spirits' concept more broadly requires the audience to buy in to an animist understanding of reality that most Western-raised creators and audience members simply don't have, so there's a disconnect. Japan, which retains an animist component of the culture through the Shinto faith, produces animist-based tales all the time and no one bats an eye, but it's harder to do in Western fantasy because there simply is no example of a Western animist culture anywhere in familiar history to fall back on so if you create a Western culture and give them an animist understanding of the world you have a lot of work to do to make the blend functional. It's not impossible, but it's definitely a challenge, while giving Western fantasy cultures a slightly modified monotheism is much easier and much more common.

I also like dinosaurs.

This seems incongruous, given that dinosaurs aren't mysterious in the slightest. I mean, there are gaps in the fossil record obviously and there are significant controversies about biomechanics, paleoecology, appearance, and the provenance of individual fossils or even whole groups, among others, but from a fantasy perspective dinosaurs are perfectly ordinary animals, and the fans will absolutely expect you to get them right if you add them into a setting. That's different from a completely made up element like dragons. Those can be anything you want them to be.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D has nature spirits, you can buy Pathfinder: Kingmaker and fight them a bunch if you want, it just doesn't have nature spirits that are functionally distinct from any other type of monster in a significant way. The fey type is basically just another form of extraplanar entity from a shiny and overgrown alternate dimension. The reductive nature of the game mechanics largely prohibits them from being truly different from anything else.

Outside of mechanics, doing nature spirits, and a 'world of spirits' concept more broadly requires the audience to buy in to an animist understanding of reality that most Western-raised creators and audience members simply don't have, so there's a disconnect. Japan, which retains an animist component of the culture through the Shinto faith, produces animist-based tales all the time and no one bats an eye, but it's harder to do in Western fantasy because there simply is no example of a Western animist culture anywhere in familiar history to fall back on so if you create a Western culture and give them an animist understanding of the world you have a lot of work to do to make the blend functional. It's not impossible, but it's definitely a challenge, while giving Western fantasy cultures a slightly modified monotheism is much easier and much more common.

There were still a lot of elements that could easily be called animism and ancestor worship in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. I don't want to get into thread-threatening levels of detail there, but I'd encourage anyone who's curious to look up things like "Lares" and "hero cults".

That's one of many reasons that I settled in on a sort of "Greco-Sumerian" zeitgeist for the game-specific setting I'm working on (the 4th BCE thread).

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm relatively catholic in my tastes as a reader, watcher, or player. Not as a GM, but that's separate.

Things that will turn me off--
* Too much gratuitous violence or sex. I'm looking at you, Mr. Martin! I got through about half the first chapter of the first SoFaI book and decided it was too much for me.
* Too depressing. I like my heroes heroic, because fantasy is a way to step outside the real world. I'm not much for crapsack worlds or "gritty" fiction.
* Too many made-up words for normal things. If it's a cow (or even a reasonably decent approximation of a cow, and the differences aren't critical), call it a cow.
* Takes itself too seriously and "realistic". Fantasy should be, well, fantastic. Mainly this means that I'm not looking for thinly-veiled real-world parallels. Different things should have "evolved" differently, and you can't just slap magic on a "real" world and keep everything else the same. Also, people tend to do "real" wrong. And that bugs me if they claim to be accurate.

Things I enjoy:
* Being able to imagine myself having adventures there.
* Fantastic things. Floating islands with perpetual waterfalls. Portals to strange places. Creatures that shouldn't exist. Cultures that aren't simply !<area>.
* Internal consistency. Even if that breaks Earth rules, I want there to be order.
* Mystery. I want there to be blank spaces on the map. Don't try to explain everything--you'll ruin it.

As far as religions go--I have the following as major religious traditions:
1. One group is pseudo-henotheistic (they revere the whole pantheon but tend to focus on a few of them) with mystery cults and related secret/public societies. Each society has different levels and people tend to use them as venues of social advancement. The major public worship is based around the 4 "seasonal" gods of the 16 true gods.
2. Another group has family-based henotheism, except they focus on one or two and then have "opposing" gods. This is all about ritual performances. Same overall pantheon, very different approach to worship.
3a. An animist culture that reveres the kami (non-human nature spirits). These aren't the fey, they're immaterial and rather alien in mentality.
3b. A group of ancestor-revering people. 3a and 3b have heavy overlap and syncretism.
4. A group that acknowledges the gods, but really worships (in a state religion with animal sacrifices) the Queen Ascendant, a newly-apotheosized (about 5 years ago) demi-god.

The metaphysics allows all of these forms of worship to grant power, and there is no real afterlife. Everyone accepts that the gods exist, but group 3 (both a and b) don't believe they're worthy of worship. They figure they're just the universe's middle management, and nobody worships the Associate Assistant Undersecretary for Technical Affairs.

[Trask]

I enjoy fantastical elements. That might sound obvious but its actually been fairly uncommon in my experience.

I want to be transported into another world, I want to see things and experience things that are truly magical and reality breaking. For example, a world of onrushing ice where everything is covered in glaciers, the sun is dying, and the sea is so thick with salt its nearly like slime and the creatures that dwell within it have grown monstrous and strange to adapt.

I wish more people would deliberately try and depart from the rolling hills of trees and stately mountains that so define the fantasy landscape and make worlds of weirdness. And no, the general Al-Haseem Arab world doesnt count, nor does Not!Mordor.

A place also doesnt have to be inhospitable and cruel to be weird and wonderful, it can be lighthearted and fun, a world of sea in the firmament where clouds form landmasses and flying magic is commonplace, where storm giants plunder and gigantic cloud cities are pulled by Rocs.

But these kinds of worlds are very specific and so rarely get put into play because kitchen sinks are easier, also because the worlds favorite kitchen sink the snoregotten realms has trained people to think thats they way they have to play.

When I play with a DM and I think the world is kind of boring, I'm not expecting some kind of goldspun masterpiece from a psychedelic fever dream, but to inject some kind of the fantastical into the world and lift it from the mundanity of expectations is appreciated.

When the world and its monsters become routine, goblins to chase away, the errant dragon to slay, it becomes boring. You can alleviate this by deliberately giving things a more mythical and fairy-tale like feel, going straight back to the source but its hard to do that with a ruleset like 5e (which my players only play) because its expectations are absolutely at a cross with fairytale style worldbuilding. So instead I end up having to go into the weird wild gonzo direction. And of course setting isnt everything, I've played in and enjoyed many games that are vanilla but at the end of the day, I think we limit ourselves sometimes in our conceptions.

[PhoenixPhyre]

@Trask,

I find that what works best for me is to inject new ideas into the old tropes without changing the surface layer.

Yes, my goblins are small and green and weird. But they're also a near hive-mind (shared memory), eusocial species where hobgoblins and bugbears are what happens when a tribe pours their collective energy into someone. And they're smarter in groups than individuals.

The other thing is to accept that magic is everywhere and in everything. If we give up the idea that it's basically "Earth, with dragons and goblins", we can end up in new and different locales even if the building blocks are very troperific.

[Trask]

@Trask,

I find that what works best for me is to inject new ideas into the old tropes without changing the surface layer.

Yes, my goblins are small and green and weird. But they're also a near hive-mind (shared memory), eusocial species where hobgoblins and bugbears are what happens when a tribe pours their collective energy into someone. And they're smarter in groups than individuals.

The other thing is to accept that magic is everywhere and in everything. If we give up the idea that it's basically "Earth, with dragons and goblins", we can end up in new and different locales even if the building blocks are very troperific.

100% agree, the old tropes have plenty of space for new life to be breathed into them. I totally understand when people dont want to wholly abandon orcs and goblins and elves and dwarves, i also like them, but getting creative and not being afraid to cast them in alien lights is what really gets the blood of wonder flowing in the veins of your game.

I think Primeval Thule has one of the coolest takes on Elves I've seen, spinning the whole Trance thing on its head and making the Elve city be one massive den of addics to a dream inducing drug where the city is near abandoned and nightmare monsters lope among the silent spires. That is awesome, and you dont need to change nearly anything about Elves in the book to make it work.

I also like your hivemind idea, although I have heard it before its effective and a good use of logical conclusion onto the trope. And yours has a lot of potential with "pouring" energy into ever new and strange forms of goblinoid.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think Primeval Thule has one of the coolest takes on Elves I've seen, spinning the whole Trance thing on its head and making the Elve city be one massive den of addics to a dream inducing drug where the city is near abandoned and nightmare monsters lope among the silent spires. That is awesome, and you don't need to change nearly anything about Elves in the book to make it work.

In the deeply Conan-influenced setting of Thule, the elves are filling the role of the ancient civilization in decline in the Howardian theory of the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations.

"One of the most common themes in Howard's writing is based on his view of history, a repeating pattern of civilizations reaching their peak, becoming decadent, decaying and then being conquered by another people. Many of his works are set in the period of decay or among the ruins the dead civilization leaves behind Despite this, Howard was in favor of civilization; he simply believed it was too fragile to survive for long."

[Trask]

In the deeply Conan-influenced setting of Thule, the elves are filling the role of the ancient civilization in decline in the Howardian theory of the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations.

"One of the most common themes in Howard's writing is based on his view of history, a repeating pattern of civilizations reaching their peak, becoming decadent, decaying and then being conquered by another people. Many of his works are set in the period of decay or among the ruins the dead civilization leaves behind Despite this, Howard was in favor of civilization; he simply believed it was too fragile to survive for long."

Yeah I'm familiar, I think Sasquatch specifically looked at this one Conan story, I forget the name where Conan comes across a city in the desert wherein all the inhabitants are constantly sleeping and being preyed upon by a monster. But regardless of it's influences, its still a good idea that injects the Elves of Thule with a dose of much appreciated weirdness that makes an Elf once again feel like a foreign and cool thing rather than just a dude with pointy ears.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah I'm familiar, I think Sasquatch specifically looked at this one Conan story, I forget the name where Conan comes across a city in the desert wherein all the inhabitants are constantly sleeping and being preyed upon by a monster. But regardless of it's influences, its still a good idea that injects the Elves of Thule with a dose of much appreciated weirdness that makes an Elf once again feel like a foreign and cool thing rather than just a dude with pointy ears.

Sorry, I wasn't objecting to it, just trying to add that layer of context to the discussion.

[Trask]

Sorry, I wasn't objecting to it, just trying to add that layer of context to the discussion.

No worries but if someone brings up anything Robert E Howard I am unable to resist flexing my knowledge

[brian 333]

For me what brings a campaign world alive is a sense of history. It's not necessary for every player to know that the island was invaded five times by five different seagoing powers, but for every discovery to be rooted in something deeper.

Thus, when seeking the Sword of King Hathor the Haggard, one discovers his fight against the Druid King Dreadwyn wasn't the heroic stand against an evil overlord as it was portrayed in popular history, but an invasion of the island by Hathor. Which may lead to ask, who were the druid Kings? Or not, as the player chooses.

The idea being that nothing in the game world comes out of the box new from the start. There is a history behind every region and culture which, even if never investigated, lends depth to the world.

It's also not necessary for the DM to write out the history. Vague hints can remain vague hints forever. Some facts are just lost to history. So, for example, when the party finally unearths The Mound Of The Druid Kings he discovers in the labyrinth below that it was built on the remains of yet another culture. Who knows who they were? Well, everyone who did appears to now be dead...

[Yora]

This is always great when you get it. But to this day I don't have a clue how you intentionally set it up.

[Aniikinis]

I really love it when there's no explicit good or bad races/kingdoms/whatever and that there's always the ability to view things from the perspectives of the other inhabitants. I always loved reading the "what other races think of [insert race here]" blurbs because of that.

Additionally, I've never understood why undead are almost always portrayed as evil when their animating energy is amoral and as such I always enjoy when there are undead races/kingdoms/whatever that aren't evil murder-machines, not!nazis, or endless devouring hordes. A good example of that is in my A'anath setting, where, near the center of a region that was the site of a natural necromantic cataclysm, there is a massive kingdom of naturally arising undead ruled by an utterly impartial lich king where the practice of necromancy is rigorously studied and regulated. The reason for all of the regulations is that, while necromancy spells are more powerful there, an out of control spell might cause a chain resurrection that leads to a wave of undead hunting for the living outside of the region.