Question of the Week – Fantasy Settings
It’s time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics.
This week’s question – what is your favorite style of fantasy setting? Like a more high fantasy one like Middle-Earth or the Forgotten Realms, urban fantasy like the Dresden Files or Kate Daniels, more steampunk like Eberron, and so on?
No wrong answers, obviously.
For myself, I think my favorite would be a pre-industrial setting with a lot of city-states and various dangerous magic. Like you can have a barbarian hero wandering from city-state to city-state, with monster-infested ruins and wilderness between them. When he gets to the city-states, he can fight corrupt sorcerers, arrogant nobles, and thieves’ guilds, and then move on to a new adventure in the next book. So basically a sword-and-sorcery style setting.
-JM
Hyperborea! Lankhmar is up there as well. Setting where magic is rare, and usually, dangerous or evil.
The first edition of the Forgotten Realms (the grey box from the 80s) was great. Enough detail to let you use the setting, lots of room to make it your own. Then all the Forgotten Realms novels started to appear with the release of the second edition (the 90s) and everybody in the world suddenly had powerful magic at their fingertips. Elminster, the Seven Sisters, Drizz’t, and others took the appeal right out of the setting for me.
I like the Spelljammer Campain setting best. A lot of great modules. It seamed it was not overly successful. A shame. I had a campain running in this setting with some people, who liked it.
In addition to the Spelljammer modules, you can easily transfer any normal module centered on a small town on an asteroid.
@Jonathan: have I missed something? Caina, part of an organization, attracts friends and allies, Ridmark, part of an organization, attracts friends and allies, Riva, part of an organization, attracts friends and allies.
In life, skill, talent, and luck are often less important than the ability to network effectively. 🙂
Hi Jonathan, I was hinting at the discrepancy between your favorite (one barbarian wandering around) and your books (a party wandering around) 🙂
A huge Sanderson Cosmere fan here, especially Stormlight Archive, I like the magically progression tied in to character development, with a bit of mystery of how things work or an unknown that takes time to unwind or tease out.
My problem here is separating the settings from the authors. Given that near impossibility, I would cast my vote for high fantasy with a bit of techno/steampunk mixed in. Example – Andre Norton’s Witch World.
In my youth I read “Thieves World” by Robert Asprin. Its a shared setting with many authors contributing.
It certainly separates the setting from the author 🙂