What are your favorite fantasy settings Veeky Forums? Any cosmologies that you guys like?

What are your favorite fantasy settings Veeky Forums? Any cosmologies that you guys like?

I usually make my own settings but I want to see what you recommend for inspiration/reuse.

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Nobody on Veeky Forums actually plays games.

We just make up our own stuff and fap over our storytime.

I have a full mast retard hard on for Final Fantasy settings. Each game is set in it's own universe with it's own unique cosmology, cultures, style, and rules (that technically exist in a multiverse that is rarely explored). But the main theme of Final Fantasy games is trying something new every single time. So you get crazy settings where an evil corporation has discovered how to drain the after life for energy in order to fuel their modern style war machine in a fantasy esque setting, a low atmosphere space colony controlled by propaganda to hate the surface world in a ploy by robot gods to commit genocide large enough that it opens the gates of heaven wide enough that they can ask dad for advice, a world where megalomaniac witches are sealed in orbital satellite tombs regularily maintained by astronauts to keep them from breaking free, aliens invading a low fantasy setting by manipulating monarchs into raging war so that they can harvest souls for their reincarnation cycle, and... There is just a lot of crazy shit there that can be used.

I personally make my own settings, but my favorite ones are settings with physical rules and laws of reality that are not literally real world physics + magic changing them.

As in people literally get sick by miasma, not microorganisms. The leaves change every year at fall not because of hibernation of the trees but because a tiny fairy goes around and paints them, and so on.

Hell, while I'm rambling...

The Tolkienesque setting where it's heavily implied that the temple of wind is actually a space station that houses highly advanced scifi war machines.

A totalitarian emperor is assassinated, but ends up usurping satan and returns to earth as the ruler of hell.

A setting where the balance of light and darkness goes both ways, and heroes of darkness rise when the light gains too much power to prevent it from destroying the world.

The heroic paladin discovers that he is half alien and must travel to the moon to prevent his people from invading.

The world had been split into two seperate dimensions in order to seal a great evil in the rift between them and now somebody is trying to fuse the worlds again.

An empire discovers that they can use their advanced science to drain the magic out of spirits to power their technology.

An ancient evil defeated by heroes past was an extraterrestrial being similar to the Thing. It's dead now, but modern day scientists have used it's cells to create super soldiers.

A witch from the future is trying to take over the past so that she can link all of time together into a single eternal moment.

A time young prodigy of magic discovers that he's an artificial lifeform developed as a prototype war machine.

A giant demon that travels the planet to lay waste to any civilisation that grows to advanced that was summoned by a wizard as revenge for his nation being destroyed. Upon killing it the demon possesses the body of the one who killed it to grow stronger.

The magical catastrophic fallout of an ancient magical spell is responsible for mutating the ancestors of the modern races into different species.

The gods grant power to a chosen king so that he will rule to their liking, and the evil empire wages war to free humanity from the rule of the gods.

Gods force humans to act as their champions, cursing those who fail with mindless undeath and rewardind those who succeed with eternal slumber only to awaken for their next task.

Half of these ideas are rip-offs of existing novels, few of them would be suitable for a party of adventurers, and you've ran none of them.
Mainly a bunch of useless noise.

Are you okay? Are you upset for some reason? I'm unsure what seems to be the problem here. If you just don't like Final Fantasy that's okay, but your critism didn't have mich clear substance to it.

And on that note, I have run some of them. But that's wholly irrelevant since the topic isn't what I've run but settings I like.

I've hated every FF game I've ever played except Tactics Advance (ya, even the old ones that are cool to like) and I thought it was a stupid criticism. I fail to see what makes them unsuitable, and virtually everything is derivative of something. We only complain when the author is too lazy or uncreative to cover it up well.

Gravity exists because the underworld is trying to draw your sould downwards.

I'm seeing recurring theme pop of 'it was sci fi all along'

Only 2 or 3 games are actually anything that could be called sci-fi. All the ones with aliens just happen to have space traveling mages. The fact that they are from another planet doesnt necessarily make it scifi, though there is a heavy mix of scifi elements in it them they are overwhelmingly more traditional fantasy toned. For example, this the the magical war machine prototype. Technically he is a artificial life form robot, but he's pretty fantasy in theme.

But you are right, it is a reoccuring theme that I enjoy.

I like ripping off every setting I come across, and then recombining the elements into something wholly unrecognizable.

For instance:

In all the 13 worlds, there exist 7 great towers, each aligned with one of the elements that make up those worlds. Only the towers for the elements that comprise a given world will allow you free access to that world, but with enough will and enough power, you can carve a path through the tower into that world, forever allowing the magic and manipulations of that element to flow through that world.

Each of the thirteen worlds is vast and different, creating a long planar strip - physical travel is thought to be possible, in theory, but has never been successfully done, outside of the towers. Inside the towers, going to a new world is as easy as climbing the stairs, so long as the world allows access...

Oddly, each of the seven towers step through the thirteen worlds in different orders.

Some of the thirteen worlds:
The Broken Sky, a collection of floating islands.
The Endless Glacier, a vertical wall of ice from which the towers jut out.
The Forest of Twilight
The Inverted Sea
The Howling Caverns
The Sunscape
etc.

I stopped trying to run it, because it was too big of a setting for the players to truly explore. I needed to make things smaller and more reasonable to make a decent setting where the players could play, and I had forgotten that.

>A setting where the balance of light and darkness goes both ways, and heroes of darkness rise when the light gains too much power to prevent it from destroying the world.
What is "Edgy shit I wrote in high school," Alex?

Are you okay? You know that light and darkness actually hold no moral qualities of their own, right? Scientifically if the world was covered in too much light it would burn to a crisp.

And edge is in presentation, not concept. The main story is about the warriors of light in that game. Just at one part of the story the spirits of the warriors of the dark from the previous generation return to lend there aid. They end up sacrificing themselves to prevent the balance from being destroyed and darkness destroying the world. It is in no way edgy.

Heres art of a dark knight from that game. You think THIS is edgy?

Oh, I know it could certainly be done well, but "the faction with the generically evil aesthetics are actually the good guys" is very much edgylord's first fiction as well as something that cuts a bit close to me personally.
And that knight's shoulders do seem to have a bit of an edge.

Okay, so what's your point?

Floating islands, airships(emphasis on the ship part), and bird people inhabiting the floating islands give me a massive hard-on.

The Edgeworld setting scratched a couple of those itches(pic related), but not enough floating islands.

Who says I need to have a point?

Elder Scrolls and ts screwed up cosmology, especially the stuff about Imperial mananauts and sunbirds and moon colonies.

>TES Spelljammer never

Everything has a point, we just don't always like to admit what they are. From the looks of it it seems you're just having a wank up on some kind of creative high horse.

The only good FF setting is Ivalice.

>He doesn't know about Vana'diel

Look up the homebrew setting "Orizon"

>Half of these ideas are rip-offs of existing novels
Is there something wrong with that?

Tower of God

In the webtoon, "The Tower" is a mysterious structure that is completely enclosed and hosts many unique environments. It is permeated by an element called "Shinsu", which has strange properties. It is inhabited by many different intelligent species. Living on the top floors is associated with a higher status in the Tower and better living conditions. This is a result of ascension from one floor to the next being only allowed by passing increasingly difficult tests of strength, dexterity and wit. Atop of the Tower sit the "10 Big Families" which form the governing body of the Tower, with king Jahad as chief leader.

Each floor is composed of three layers: an external Outer Tower which serves as the residential area, an Inner Tower where people are tested, and a Middle Area, which acts as a network linking each floor. Residents of each floor are given the chance to ascend, provided that they are deemed "worthy" of doing so by Headon, the First Floor's Guardian and caretaker of the Tower. Such people are referred to as "Chosen Regulars" in Tower of God. The Tower is sealed from the vast, unknown "Outside" by portentous, impenetrable doors. On rare occasions, extraordinary people are able to open the doors and enter the Tower. Such people are called "Irregulars" in the webtoon, and protagonist Twenty-Fifth Baam is one of them.

Sounds neat. I love tower like settings.

I love hollow worlds, like Pellucidar. Strangely I can't think of any fantasy settings that use that for their undergrounds instead of plain old caverns.

Looks neat, thanks user.

Such a great setting. Shame all people want to do with it is play magical lesbians.

Playing magical lesbians in that setting it like playing rape survivors in Changling: The Lost - it just means that the players understand the themes of the game they are getting into. Don't bitch about it - it's just a signal of their acceptance. Play out fantastic stories.

That your party is using themselves as love interests just means you don't have to be everyone's romance. Just get a cute girl who can be a mysterious waif for whoever is left out.

>What are your favorite fantasy settings Veeky Forums?

1. Tolkien's Middle-earth
2. Warhammer Fantasy (RIP)
3. Miura's Berserk
4. Howard's Conan

>Play out fantastic stories.
Pretty hard when all the party wants to do is fuck around and magical realm it up.

>magical lesbians is an inherent part of Nanoha
It's important to separate canon from RP though. Just because the majority of characters in the franchise are pretty gay, that doesn't mean your characters have to be. You can have the most vanilla hetcis male and it still be Nanoha-esque. It all depends on how you frame it.

So, you're saying you can't get the party motivated?

You haven't dropped a waifu strapped to an artifact of phenomenal power or anything on them?

You haven't had some mysterious dark magical girl kick all their asses with a look of tragic pain on her face, because it hurts?

You haven't even given them adorable lolis flouncing in lacy dresses wielding improbable weapons?

Or do your players suck and not jump on any of those completely world-appropriate hooks?

Or were you trying to run it as a game of corporate intrigue or something?

read all of those and liked them.

Anything else you might wish to add to the list?
I'm in search fo stuff to read.

>The Inverted Sea
Fucking cool.

This. Light and dark are not intrinsically tied to morality.
Pallbearer puts it nicely.
youtube.com/watch?v=4ArNlI5PZSs

Fucking Pellucidar! Its idiotic when you think about it with even basic physics understanding, but goddam it tickles me.

Conan definitely hits #1 on this list for me. Why aren't we getting more Conan media, and maybe a film adaptation that is modern and doesn't suck? Fuck a TV show would be AMAZING now days if done well. If history channel can put together Vikings, someone can make a decent Conan show.
My big fetish parallel weird universes like The Lands of Sleep (Dreamlands), Barlowe's vision of hell and KillSixBillionDemons cosmology, even if the story is pretty meh.

Isn't this basically Dark Souls?

Chrono is pretty fucking awesome and he's a straight male. He becomes an admiral and has two children around age 20.

No, Dark Souls is "the world is dying. Choose whether to sacrifice yourself to save it or allow it to pass and become the creator/lord of the new one".

If you like WFRP, I would recommend Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy and Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora books.

>Earthdawn
>parts of WHFRPG
>Mage: The Ascension - I like explanation of magic and nature of reality (vampires and stuff imo suck ass though)
>Ar Tonelico (weeb jrpg series)
>Glorantha

Mfw. I modeled bits of magic system and one pricipality in my setting after Belka in homage to Nanoha.

Tried developing a setting based on Discworld, where everything took place on the underside of the disc. No elephants holding it up or anything, just this ceiling of soil and rock that everyone had to hang off of.

I had a few races in my head for the setting but I forgot them.

Ivalice is one of my favourites. The aesthetics of the setting are wonderful and it has a surprising amount of depth.

Nirn is the other one. I'm an absolute sucker for Kirkbride's work, in all it's barely comprehensible acid trip glory. KSBD, but if I like Kirkbride that's basically a given.

Malazan Book of the Fallen, as well, for the interesting cultures and a very cool take on magic and godhood.

And then I rip off all three of these to forge my own setting.

>Butthurt, salty grognard detected

I think what user is trying to say is that he is trying to run a more serious campaign (maybe political, I don't know) but all his players want to do is be lesbians, which is quite frankly, boring.