I wanna run a fantasy campaign after years and years of contemporary settings and cyberpunk. But at the same time, I wanna avoid overusing the sorts of locales everyone's seen a million times over. There's only so many times a sewer romp or an ancient dwarven ruin can feel fresh.
What are some actually interesting kinds of fantasy locations to toss at 'em? Crystallised forests inhabited by sentient fungus? Cavernous meteorites filled with creatures from beyond stars? Ancient temples where the flow of time is all fucked? Any kinds of ideas are appreciated.
It's nice when the whole world is fantastic. Just look up to the sky and realize you're not in Kansas anymore.
Jeremiah Bennett
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Bentley Wilson
-A city of fairies that lives on a pinhead. They hold many secrets to size-biased magics.
-Stairway to heaven. Surprisingly short, actually leads to a floating island where winged humanoids live. The residents understand, but still must turn entire pilgrimages away on a regular basis. Will gladly accept donations.
Neverland - A city that is forever falling down a bottomless hole.
Blind Bluff - A land that only exists by people who can't see it. Sighted folk will see a bunch of people walking on air just beyond a cliff. If they close their eyes, they may join.
Hunter Adams
These are cute. I like them a lot.
How do you reach a city that's forever falling down, though?
Grayson Ramirez
Not that user, but it's falling very, very slowly. Like about a meter a year slowly, enough to be noticeable but not enough that the city's unreachable
Elijah Jackson
So Neverland is zero-g?
Adam Smith
Toriko is a nice inspiration source.
Lot of fuked up word ideas. Acid rain, meteor rain, slow rain, laser rain, metal feet rain.
Logan Moore
>How do you reach teleport, portal. But those are boring high fantasy answers.
The city is orbiting the setting word, only its orbit pass through it. So you just need to stay near the hole and jump down at the right moment. If you miss it return in another 8 hours (or weeks whatever the plot demands)
Owen Scott
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Henry Fisher
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Ayden Long
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Eli Phillips
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Lincoln Davis
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Isaac King
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Lucas Kelly
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John Lewis
The Sun is an eye. Anything that happens under th elight of the sun the God sees and if he dislikes it can send palladins fater you.
Samuel Nelson
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Camden Brooks
Very tall towers.
Mason Cook
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Joseph Anderson
Find me a reason or an explanation of this.
Ayden Taylor
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Asher Price
Big invisible castles.
William Diaz
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Connor Sullivan
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Evan Reed
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Colton Flores
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Jack Hall
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Ryan Johnson
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Jeremiah Baker
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Isaiah Morales
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Evan Thomas
Aqueduct build by a geomancer.
Jeremiah Long
that's all i have
Anthony Martinez
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Lincoln Perez
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Sebastian Anderson
Reminds me of Halo.
Jace Moore
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Matthew White
How the fuck do those ladders work?
Landon Gray
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Ayden White
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Jace Edwards
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William Jenkins
>fairy city living on a PC's new equipment >equipment gains enchantments if the owner completes quests for them
Elijah Gutierrez
It's a ladder for mages. If you can't at the very least bend gravity to an angle to walk those stairs you are not worthy of ascending.
Matthew Stewart
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Asher Peterson
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Isaac Hill
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Parker Gray
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Logan Sanchez
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Joshua Rivera
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David Davis
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Gavin Garcia
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Jaxon Walker
LSD?
Asher Stewart
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Jaxson Williams
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Juan Thompson
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Aiden Long
This is perfect if you've got a stable group already running contemporary or cyberpunk settings. Even better if you're currently running a game. You set up a situation where some BBEG is engineering something terrible or apocalyptic. Real civilization-ending stuff. Then you try to tune it so your players lose. Obviously don't just "rocks fall, everyone dies", give them a good fight, but make sure the BBEG's evil plan succeeds somehow. Maybe the BBEG sacrifices themselves to the heroes so that the real (plot device) goes undetected and succeeds in (doing huge world altering thing). Maybe it's an extremely toxic mutagen that kills most things, and the surviving things are nothing like their original variants. Maybe it's just straight nuclear apocalypse.
Then, you figure out what that world looks like in a thousand years and that's your setting for the next campaign. Obviously don't tell your players this, let them figure it out or have their plot hooks be about figuring out how certain peculiarities of the world work. Maybe end up directing them to their old character's stomping grounds, or have them scavenge in the ruins of where the BBEG fight was.
John Williams
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Jeremiah Rogers
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Daniel Perry
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Grayson Carter
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Carter Morris
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Angel Taylor
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Dominic Cox
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Chase Gonzalez
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Asher Thompson
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Evan Reed
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Benjamin Fisher
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Luke Robinson
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Hunter Lewis
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Cameron Thomas
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Alexander Baker
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Owen Cooper
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Wyatt Powell
Great stone giant corpses that have been hollowed out and built into grand internal cities.
Christopher Scott
a really, really slow apocalypse.
Cameron Young
I've always wanted to do something like The Mist from Steven King's short story book Skeleton Crew, except make it low/no magic medieval fantasy
Sebastian Hall
>the real land of the blind. Beware the servants of the One-Eyed King, for he fears usurpers >a city where the streets are paved in gold and fine wine flows freely. as such, they find little value in the stuff, and will pay top dollar for steel and mundane brews. a small smuggling ring in the city knows this, and will do anything to keep their monopoly on the stuff. >a forest of tree. just the one. what seems like other trees are just outgrowths from the roots of the main one. >an island serving as the siren equivalent of a leper colony. their discordant tones drive away all men who hear it, hence the exile. >the shadows of a great fortress, cast across the plains. no fortress stands as far as the eye can see. >a great, miles wide chasm to the underground, which the seas are pouring into. someone tried digging into a load-bearing cavern down there. Dwarves can be seen feverishly striving in vain to stem the flow.
And pertinent to the conversation, I'm running a hellish landscape right now for one my players whose character trying to get out of Gehenna.
Fun stuff, lots of macabre and depressing descriptors, crazy petitioners, any big mountain or whatever is on the scale of "biblical" And I have this darksouls-esque system in place where his character can't regen hp, only steal it by murdering petitioners or other damned, who are all pathetic and wrathful.
Kevin Watson
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Nathan Nelson
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William Reed
A city built carved out of the fossilized remains of a dead god
Dylan Reyes
>a forest of tree. just the one. what seems like other trees are just outgrowths from the roots of the main one. That's a real thing.
Leo Cox
>ancient dwarven ruin
NEW dwarven ruins!
Dwarves moved west only fifty years ago, nobody has heard of them since.
The city is till mainly clay brick on the mountain side, nobody has dug very deeply yet. Most mansions have extensive basements, and tunnels connect many of them, but you can always find a way to the surface because people still needed to get there.
Dylan Gutierrez
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Dylan Reed
truly, reality is the most fantastic setting of all
