We make the comfiest setting we can

"Van Winkle's Labrynth" goes by several other names, "The Endless Dream", "The Devil's Cushion", and most of all "The Pillow Purgatory".

No one truly knows its true extent, but some of the most 'lucid' survivors have been able to describe the last few hours before they escaped the dungeon.

Within the Labrynth is an endless maze composed entirely of things soft or padded. Mattresses, couch pillows, thick carpet shag, curtains, and so on, connected by endless series of dividing curtains, pillow tunnels, soft ramps and so on.

The sense of fear is suppressed here, even if one tries to be afraid. Bodies do not hunger, sweat, age or produce waste or get filthy. The mind does not seem to notice these things, as though it felt natural. Nor are people able to harm or be harmed here, even if they bring weapons or fire, which simply reappear at the entrance. Though there are places dark or pitch black, there is always a way to create soft light or find one's ways back to the bright places illuminated by elaborate and decorative lighting fixtures. From corners and cracks in the walls, or sometimes as a breeze, flows a cool or cold air that feels and smells exactly like window box air conditioning though its source is never known. In certain hallways the temperature drops dramatically, but these are always stocked with thick mattresses and soft bedding on the floor, or with thick sleeping bags.

Despite not being able to be fatigued or sweaty, one can get tired here and evidently it is very easy to nap. And despite its seemingly unknowable size, those lost in the maze tend to encounter others. Most survivors report not ever being able to feel or desire lust, though a select few have and acted on it, but there is a strong tendency to cuddle in the labrynth, even with complete strangers that suddenly feel like family or a close friend, even despite any attempts to convey or share life details being easy to forget.

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Pre-determined fate is crap.

The core of the setting is a collection of city states surrounded by smaller villages in the marches. They mostly produce olive oil and other agricultural produce and trade with lands to the south and east for spices, coffee and tea and with lands to the north for furs and metals. The large amount of trade going through the city states funds a great deal of innovation and so many of the cities have large public projects on display to entertain the populace like a clockwork puppet show.

The smaller villages often have their own unique customs that vary from place to place.

Dragons are not thought of as terrifying world enders. They are infact very rare, ancient beasts that have been around for thousands of years. They sometimes visit other races between long periods of rest, to listen to the stories of the world and talk for a while, maybe even bask in the world's ever shifting cultures that, to them, always seem a little different every time they wake up.

Smaller dragons, ones with shorter lifespans, are still rare. They are the ones most adventurers may encounter, or sometimes one might find its way into a populated area and become integrated in society. They are typically benevolent, powerful guardians and are highly sought after by kingdoms for use in creating dragoon knights.

Some villages near areas where the barrier between this world and the realm of Faerie is week have fey markets every year, when traders from all around the world come to purchase and sell the exotic goods that can be found at these markets like a drop of moonlight or the memory of love lost.

Immortality has been shared with all the races. Aging occurs the more satisfied someone is with their life. Dying of old age occurs when someone is content with the life that they have lived.

It's said that the land stretches to infinity. Towns and cities are always a set number of days away always in a specific direction.

Nowhere is the foggy place of eternal dusk. If you want to be alone, simply wander a month not seeking anything. The deeper you travel into Nowhere, the more likely you are to encounter the dark creatures that lurk there. The mindless monsters of Nowhere do not seek to attack the rest of the world, but are hostile to those not of their lands.

Nentir Vale already exists.

The main 'bad guy' faction should have an industrialist theme or an anti-comfy thing going on with it.

Sometimes a dragon might become a part of a small village, acting as a work beast and protector. In many cases, the creature may form a deep friendship with a child or young adult in the village, and the two often become inseparable, bound for great things and adventures together. These pairings are usually given extensive training with sword and spear, and the two learn to fight together, both on mount and on foot in rhythm with one another. In a few unusual cases dragoons have been seen snuggling or dancing with their dragon.

Nah, no 'bad guy' faction. There are simply bad people in the world that will be dickbags.

The bad guy is a human from another time.

He spends his time building robots, and has an entire city of machines far from society.

Expanding empire to the east with a focus on industry that builds huge pieces of brutalist architecture. Faceless legions march before it and those living under the empire yoke a weak pale and hopeless folk.
This stands in contrast to the innovation and free spiritedness of the inhabitants of the city states and their surrounding villages.

The main bad guy is a greedy farmer who wants to acquire a majority of the farmland in an agrarian society, and then rent out the land at high prices to poor tenant farmers.
It is up to the players to get him to change his selfish ways.

Gog-builders that create great factories and hire or force people to work in them. Yet even among the great machines, people create small, conformable places heated with iron stoves. In places where the machinist have failed, their buildings are retaken by nature and people that would make them cozy.

I really really really do not like the idea of a 'bad guy' faction or even a main 'bad guy.' Allow the players to come up with their own assholes.

depends what level the players are, I guess.
Low level the average asshole could be a decent bad guy, but the more powerful the players get the more of an asshole they need to oppose them.

Gog-builders is a sick name.

>The Dark Overlord has been defeated, his fortress razed, and his minions scattered
>The great heroes have returned to their homes to settle down and tend to their families
>Years later, a group of children accidentally venture too far into the woods, and stumble across the long abandoned ruins of ancient battlefields.

And then take it from there.

>Powerful

Why would players need to grow stronger?

Isn't that just horse show?

Could have the industrialist empire be in the background, something to contrast the comfiness of the main setting with.
Maybe it could have been beaten back years ago and so there are the ruins of its factories dotting the lands, but it is slowly resurfacing and regaining its power far in the east.

Humans fuck everything up. The perfect comfy setting wouldn't have any. Only cute bird and lizard people. And maybe tree octopodes.

I think we can salvage the concept. Think of it less as a prophecy and more as a reflection of your spirit/mind in the same way your physical appearance is of your body. Obviously you can't read the future or whatever, but you can see trends, anxieties, talents, and that sort of thing. Given the complexity of, well, people, one's True Name is extremely long, and changes over time. Specialized "doctors" are tasked with deciphering the stuff.

Could be that it was once a more noble polity, all art deco aesthetics and futurist ideals, but the beatdowns over the years and the desperation to hold on have rendered it a brutal echo of what it once was.

The trouble I'm already seeing is disagreement on what "comfy" means for the world. I see some people arguing for no major threats or character growth at all. A static world with no conflict is a pretty dead one, and even "comfy" needs something going for it for anyone to care about the comfiness.

'comfy' in Veeky Forums's definition is toothless saturday morning cartoon fluff.

Sounds like an adventure for this guy

comfy af

Thats cute as fuck.

The story I reuse whenever I want to intro friends (I used for my siblings and a cousin as well) is pretty good for a comfy world imo: a young elf's pet elven hound has contracted rabies and he's desperately trying to find adventurers to find it before the cooshee accidentally starts infecting people and animals.

Also you could have relics of an ancient, more evil age before everything became comfy.

That's equal parts cute and horrifying as fuck.

You're overthinking it. Fate doesn't mean your life is in stone, it means things have a place, and that's part of basic comf.

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I was thinking that the industrialist empire would be the generic orc or foe if you couldn't find an enemy to fit the situation.

I am in total agreement with this.

There hasn't been a war for over 100 years, the longest in remembered history, since The Coalition of Seven Banners helped broker the peace. The final terms were harsh but fair.

Industrialist empire is the enemy coming from within. The professional army led by an aging heroic general, who is credited with much of the success in winning the previous war. He became obsessed with staving away aging and death and when gods and their priests could do nothing, he turned to mad scientists and alchemists. His funeral was just last week, a grand affair. Two days later his tomb was disturbed and his body taken...

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Now that's comfy, aging as maturity in a literal sense.

Why not have a multicultural empire which is ruled by a wise emperor.
The capital could be a huge cultural powerhouse where every population group has left their marks.
The rest of the empire could contain comfy towns with bathouses, temples and generally aesthetic looking infrastructure with comfy shire-like villages.

My current setting is focused on a comfy area: it's a network of city states and peasant republics, they're kinda egalitarian, have trade and shit, things are looking up, and since a lot of the region is mountains a lot of escaped slaves come from the neighbouring regions.

The thing is they're also a group of people who literally just threw off their feudal lords one or two generations ago, and there's still plenty of claimants who consider the land and its people entirely theirs, so while there's some internal issues, there's also the external issue of a bunch of hothead assholes trying to take it back.

This on top of relics of ancient evils (e.g. there's rumors of one of the old lords who was a mage still lying dormant as a lich under the ruins of a town that were recently uncovered by an earthquake)

Also, these names manifest in the form.of brightly colored, simplistic images on the upper left buttock.

City states > Empires as far as comfiness goes.

Also as far as defining comfy, I think OPs pick related is a pretty good yardstick. Middle earth is a lovely example of a comfy setting that has actual threats in it.

I want to piggy back on this idea for comfy and also for adding conflict to the setting.

"The Disquiet" is an ever present force under the world and it senses those that are discontent- filled with greed, envy, ambition or yearning. Where these emotions run high the Disquiet manifests as shades and nightmarish beasts to further bring disharmony. The threads of fate seems to begin to pujll the world out of equilibrium. Banishing the Disquiet is as much a work of physical conflict as it is a work to restore psychic balance and satisfaction to those that have become displeased. The greatest hero's are not o my strong of arm and swift of mind, but they are councilors that help restore satisfaction in the people.

You could also have a "too comfy!" Evil force that pulls people into listless, lazy, uncaring lotus eater states.

>delving into a gog-builder factory
>its secrecy vault hasn't been penetrated
>gog-builder known to use mostly nonviolent traps
>every trap is designed to have no lethality but give the gog time to take your supplies so you can't progress
>he only wants explorers to try to get in so he can design countermeasures
>after every failed expedition inside he changes up his trap setup and tinkers with items stolen
>no one really dies, they are just deposited at the entrance empty handed and have no items
>gog-builder thinks this is the funniest thing around and thinks this a game
>every so many months he tries to entice more adventurous youths to try.
>always offers weird things only a gog-builder would find useful.
>near by village has a yearly celebration where the whole town gets together and sends in teens with a bag of sweats as a right of passage.
>when captured the sweats are taken and small trinkets are given as a token of trying.

Even if it was a rehash of Lost Vikings, Trine was a comfy game for sure.

What is a Gog?
For some, they are dungeons, to explore and plunder its riches.
For others, they are marvels of architecture, stunning and inspiring.
For others, they are homes, shelter and living environment.
For others, they are huge memorials of irrationality, weirdness and wonder.
But no matter its shape, location, or denizens, everybody can agree to one thing: the strange warmth one feels when they're inside a Gog. It is a vague feeling of contentment, excitement, and belonging all at once.

Your primary goal could be exploration. Since this is a comfy setting, all of the big bad threats have passed and people have rebuilt, although much knowledge about the past has been lost, save for a few vague stories of titanic battles and great forces clashing with the world as their prize. The world's brighter, calmer and more mysterious than it's ever been before. An old historian, looking appropriately wizardly, is paying your band of friends good coin to go find relics for him, so he might piece together the past that has been lost to time. Of course, delving into these places of old and retrieving ancient relics is not without risk, but it would be a shame to simply let these things fade into antiquity.

This is how I think of it :
There are monsters, but they are neither evil nor hostile. The only time you will be at risk will be when a creature, for example, will have lost its younglings, will be wounded, or when a gigantic creature (which is a must in a comfy setting imo) doesn't know that it's going to damage your village.
There has been a mysterious civilization that left for gods-know-where (there's evidence of long dried-up travel magic rituals in the ruins), and left lots of buried cities and temples and such.
There are a lot of adventurers because adventuring is a normal way for young men and women to forge their life while discovering the marvels of the world : climbing up a gigantic and mysterious statue, drinking at the source of the serpentine river who is supposed to bring you happiness, exploring the old ruins where in the deep lies a starry sea looking like a reflection of the night sky in which swim gigantic sentient whales.
Most people live in tiny villages because the land is big compared to the number of humans and there is always more room to settle.

Definitely this. I want me an old nice scholar giving his grandchildren and their friends ancient maps and tricks to adventure in places he's explored himself, or missed because he had to return to the village

Also this is kind of a silly thought for a coming of age tradition: in most towns and villages, every child who cames of age receives something that breaks the sumptuary laws that used to be part of the rules of the land (something like a sword, or a piece of clothing of a formerly banned color, usually something that can be used for a youth who wants to wander), and wanderlust is, if not mandatory, encouraged at least for a few years, that they may see either the outside or the rest of the vales.

If you're receiving a supernaturally destined fate, why should it be out of line with your preferences?

Think I saw a similar screencap about a sloth succubus.

How about a large border city where cultures meet, with everything else being smaller, homogeneous towns and villages. No empire, just loose city-states.
Empires are very uncomfy. Mixing cultures can be comfy, but in the context of imperial/governmental power it rarely is.

>wise emperor
Because it's an extremely uncomfy setup that requires conquest and the philosopher king was historically designed as a justification for slaver tyrannies with a smiling face.

Organic cities are convenient centers of trade, not imperial capitals.

Also "good empires" usually rely on extremely rosy notions of either Rome or imperial China, both of which were actually deeply uncomfy when you scratch the surface.

Comfy city states ruled by philosopher kings > everything except small towns and villages in terms of comfiness

The big brute monsters like ogres, orcs and giants are complete lightweights when it comes to alcohol, alluding the old tales when the hero would trick them by waking them pass out on booze

A concept that came from an impassioned defense of tyranny and slavery under a philosophical veneer is not very comfy, sorry. Plato a shit.

Ideal of just rulers guiding their peoples and ruling with nobility and virtue > messy democracy where corrupt politicians and demagogues can take power.

>t. aristocrat
"just" rulers are a lie

>no character growth
>no conflict

What? where has anyone proposed this?

Fuck that. People's lives are their own. That's comfy.

Not even remotely. No kings.

Kings are not comfortable.

Fuck the idea of a mandated ruler.

I think comfy can sort of accomodate both. But with less of a tendency for dramatic irony.

Nah, removing people's agency is uncomfy. This is a fact of life.

Black magic is reviled outlawed and banned with practitioners hunted down mercilessly, not because it's inherently evil per se but because advanced necromantic techniques let a mage practicing it trade life essence for power, and then use other techniques regain life essence. This essentially acted as a closed loop that allowed the black mages before to build their power exponentially until they became godlike, and then they fell out and fought each other in a war that nearly destroyed the world. The survivors of these wars now enforce a the moratorium on black magic.

The enforcers ensure that world is maximum cosy, because anyone not cosy gets a knock on the door at three AM and a holy mace to the back of the head.

Nah, this shit is super uncomfy.

THIS.

That anime is the peak of comfiness, and there's still bad shit and evil people. They just don't dominate. A town might be run by a corrupt church scheme, but they don't use it as an excuse to oppress people just because they're there to be oppressed. A trader might make an unethical business deal, but he doesn't cackle and rub his hands together while thousands starve so he can afford a fifth palace.

Basically, the evil in Spice & Wolf is small-scale. That doesn't make it any less interesting or worth working against.

That's the opposite of cosy.

Not saying necromancy shouldn't be seen as a problem but, er, no.

While escape from the dense of the Gog-Builders is for most impossible, within the regular times in which the Builders cast their attention elsewhere there is enough relative freedom within its walls that something of a life can be created. While the cities are dark, incessantly raining and labyrinthine, many find it oddly calm and comforting.

Various men and women who have slipped through the cracks of the Builders regimented labour often find themselves in the position of a detective/fixer, solving whatever issue that may face the denizens of the metropolis. Often the Builders will look the other way on this, as they form a valuable 'maintenance' feature for the city.

Basically the Gog-Builders create Noir cities.

youtube.com/watch?v=FiMqZmNHU1I

Exactly, low scale. No evil factions, just assholes.

Nah, having this in the setting makes it very un-comfy.

Lord of the rings had Mordor and it is still an incredibly comfy setting. Just because the setting is comfy doesn't mean it can't have evil on a large scale in it. It provides a greater scope for the setting beyond just small scale conflicts and broadens the potential stories.
Just because one small element of the setting that far away from the many focus isn't 100% comfy doesn't mean it shouldn't be in the setting.
Comfiness is enhanced by having a contrast to it, look at hobbit and the shire compared to Mordor, you appreciate the comfiness of the shire more because you see what the world would be like without it in the scouring of the shire.

Would this kind of adventure fit in a comfy setting
>Local mages decides to be a dick
>Finds a couple eager teens to do a heist on another mage he claims is a rival, they don't know about each other, he wants his grimoire
>The other mage is actually in on it, they're basically hoping the kids will fight over it
>My plan as a DM Is that this is how the party meets, for pranks or revenge to ensue

Care to share user?

>
remember: armour your fucking knees

And fluffy tails.

How about Golden Sky Stories? Is that comfy enough?

I always tought it'd be funny to have a comfy part of a setting, which is at the same pretty technologically-savvy.

Ghosts manifest themselves as wisps with a golden light shining from within its center. The majority of these wisps are harmless, but they have something they need to do before they can move on to the afterlife. Provided you know how, you can talk to them and help them with whatever errand they need to be truly at peace. The dead are generous with their rewards too, since they have no need for gold or possessions in the afterlife.

I'm liking the idea of a bunch of ruined castles, temples, and dungeons from a war-torn era gone by, all dotting the land, each with magic artifacts and treasure inside. PCs go out to find them for money, glory, personal use, or the lost knowledge, and along the way, meet various cultures and characters. Maybe fight some monsters that aren't evil, so much as territorial, or maybe some skeletons inhabiting a dungeon that has been without a master for a long time. Perhaps the PCs get involved with a some merchant scam, or try to ride the high of a market boom. Exploration, light danger, but never edgy.

The whole world is in perpetual rain, with nothing but oceans. The humans live in small houses on poles

How do you have wood if there is dryland?

Slice of life. Comfy villages, cute & friendly animals, naturally benevolent humans, nature spirits, etc. I think of Anne of Green Gables or Golden Sky stories or the Hobbit or something.

If anything, the plot can follow heroes protecting their little slice of heaven from un-comfy baddies.

scientists manipulated water to open a portal to a dimension of pure wood

also there's a moon made of wood that periodically rains down wood chunks