Does anyone else have a soft spot for "anachronistic weeb fantasy" settings, like the ones in these pictures?

Does anyone else have a soft spot for "anachronistic weeb fantasy" settings, like the ones in these pictures?

danbooru.donmai.us/pools/12235
danbooru.donmai.us/pools/12907

Specifically, the kind with cities that would look hardly out-of-place in some European town in the modern world, and have many modern trappings and contrivances... but are still ultimately fantasy settings, with swords instead of assault rifles, carriages (or maybe airships) instead of cars, no electricity lines or internet networks, and so on.

They look like such comfortable and colorful places to live in that simply exploring these cities and resolving everyday problems sounds entertaining, and of course, the stakes can always be ramped up with your standard RPG world threats.

Have you ever played in a setting like this?

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danbooru.donmai.us/pools/12235
danbooru.donmai.us/pools/12907
youtu.be/ruztCDwPs7c
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>scalies
y-yeah...

It doesn't look so much anachronistic as it looks endured.
European cities often have brick buildings from centuries ago that are still in use and maintained.

What do you think a Scalie oriented city would look like? Lots of ‘open’ spaces to harness maximum sun? Would you see more greenhouses on rooftops?

probably underground houses for sleeping through winter/cold and rainy days with a connecting tunnel system and above open places, maybe only walls to seperate "rooms"

depending on the scalie race and uniqueness other added shit
theres a "fishing" lizard(dunno his name rn) which warms up in the sun, then jumps off a cliff into water to fish, due to being cold afterwards theyre pitchblack so maybe a village by a cliff would be cool

Another example, if a bit lower-tech.

Hey I love this artist! Good taste user

Yup!!
They give me such a nice vibe. Although I usually relate them with MMO's like Dungeon Fighter Online or those 3D stuff like Flyff and the likes.

They would often be port towns in tropical climates, in order to get the humidity and heat right. Many houses would have dark tiled roofs with easy access to act as basking spots in the morning. Some places have brass mirrors to collect the light from the morning sun and wake them in bed through a skylight if the scalie in question is a busybody. In general though, the people of scalie towns are the relaxed, easy going type, believing that things will get done when they get done.

Those are my favorite settings, wish I had more (any) art of them.

absolutley.
I love it, i would also love a non weeb version of it.
let me explain.

Look how Shadowrun blends magic and modernity: it takes modern world and throws magic in it. Now imagine the opposit.
Have a fantasy universe evolve into the modern world with much of its systems still intact.

Rifles and Swords can coexist (think Dune, with mages existing, so do shields that cannot be penetrated by projectiles etc.)
The countryside is full of terrifying monsters.

While in real life Science advances, in a fantasy universe magic does.
But what does this mean for the individual? For the individual this does not mean that a level 10 mage would be the equivalent of a medieval level 20 mage.
What it would mean in my opinion is that an NPC Guard could be the equivalen tof a level 5 fighter.
think Eberron, wide rather than high. Instead of having realy "high powered" characters you have lots of low powered charaters who can either use magic "PC classes", by which i mean defying mundane reality with heroic acts.
Stuff like hunting Monsters that cause power outages could be a luctrative gig for Adventurers trying to pay off Student loans.
Still society would be more martial than it is today, the world is more dangerous, civilization might create stable societies, but the wilds are still full of monsters, many who also use the convenience of modern technology.
I can see for example a country of "Always Chaotic Evil" races become sort of like Germany, always haunted by their past, never able to let go.

I wanna see a setting like that.

>Pic related
A non weeb version of this setting.

Is there a setting out there that is largely fantastical but people have modern commodities and accessible electricity and maybe even modern clothes?
Shadowrun has a nice aesthetic sometimes but but I'm looking for something that isn't futuristic.

Arcanum is something that's close to what you described but takes place in Victorian era and visually it is kinda ranges from ugly to uninspired, unfortunately, nothing that comes close to your picture

Let me give you some contrast here.
I personally like to think of Lizardmen in the "Evil reptillians" trope rather than the "marsh dwelling savages" trope.
Likewise i prefer the "Savage Everything wants to kill you land" over the "Tropical Wetlands", tho tropical wetlands can be included.

Now the idea is that Society in such a setting as OP suggests has moved on from this bollocks.
So this could lead to some nice contrast in visual theme. Imagine Everquests Kunark, Warhammers Lustria and MTGs Jund Volcanos spewing fumes in the air surrounded by green hell, with the backdrop of a boiling sea that smells like sulfur.

And in that youve got these Lizard bros just chilling, trying to forget about the past tragedies.
Thermal baths would be extremley common, generaly cities would be built near volcanic sites.
As such building would probably not be in terms of Skyscrapers or anything that is hard to replace.
Town centres would be the most strange looking places. The old architecture is Dark and Forboding, with strange glyphs inlaid in the large stones of Temples to strange, alien gods.
Next to that you have a stand of a guy selling Hot dogs roasted crickets while a small but overcrowded tramp rustles by getting people to work.

Where once were saccrificial pits to the glowering Serpent god, now the favorite picknick place of the town flourishes, what were once slave quarters is now the Avantgarde Ogre district.

i know of it, as for victorian.
theres a Victorian 4E campaign going on thats realy nice currently.

But yeah this is something entierly different, its more about the whole "Modern but neither Shadowrun nor World of Darkness" i guess.

>theres a Victorian 4E campaign going on thats realy nice currently.

I, too, played Zeitgeist 4e back when it was cool.

I like the setting style and think it's fun. Good base to work off of.

I'm looking at that picture and still can't place what's anachronistic with it.
Are you happend to be American, OP?

She lives in a fantasy world.

I suggest then learning what "anachronistic" means

>anachronistic weeb fantasy

Yes, I do love the aesthetic of SNES-era Final Fantasy.

Maybe has to do with people still fighting monsters in the wilderness with swords.

... still has nothing to do with or . It more sounds like OP (or you, assuming you are not OP) never in your life saw average European city, where buildings tend to be centuries old and nobody sees anything wrong or strange with that, not to mention anachronistic.
Want anachronistic picture? is a half-decent example.

danbooru.donmai.us/pools/12235
danbooru.donmai.us/pools/12907
They're all in the same world.

Still doesn't change shit that some of them simply don't qualify to be called anachronistic, user. Just because you have totally not Dutch city with brick buildings and canals doesn't make it anachronistic. Same goes with having fantastic races thrown into it. Swords, on the other hand, or "knight cops"...

Yeah, swords, no real automobiles or guns or trains or plains.

It's anachronistic as a whole.

I give up, cause I would have to repeat my existing post word by word at this point

dont they fight with swords too?
I think this is not rely the discussion to be had in this thread.
I think we all get what the idea of the setting is

Yes, it looks so comfy.

I, too, like comfortable, lived-in modern fantasy settings.

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I would simply like if OP didn't use words he doesn't exactly grasp (or at least seems to have problems with using them), that's all.
Other than that, I'm all in into anachronistic settings. In certain way, lion share of all fantasy settings are big pile of anachronism, unless autistically well-researched toward historical accuracy of some region and period, then covered with bits and points of fantasy garnish.

>it's a modern-ish looking world but there are no cars or computers and people still fight monsters with swords
>not anachronistic

Is there a system with a setting like this one?

Any system is going to work, since it's setting-based, not system-related

Really anything that isn't hardwired to only work in traditional fantasy settings will do. You could PF because Golarion is basically this, ignoring the fact that it's total dogshit.

Pathfinder also has kitsune.

You want Ryuutama. It emphasizes coziness, and it's also Japanese, and those things make a lot of modern comforts bleed into it.

You guys are wrong. Any system, even a generic one, will make hidden assumptions of how the game world works. You can play d20 Modern or try to do myth-inspired fantasy in GURPS to see what I mean. A system not built for the genre you're using it for has a shit stink.

Which is odd because it's really the only explicitly weebish race from official sourcebooks. The rest is just hard furbait. *cough* catfolk *cough*

>Any system, even a generic one, will make hidden assumptions of how the game world works

>generic systems don't work
>so play GURPS

I think he meant anachronistic because a JRPG often comes with the automatic assumption of pseudo-medieval trappings despite an outwardly more modern appearance, and user was running on that assumption.

That scepter is giving me a geometrical head-ache

I was using GURPS fantasy as an example of a game with a shit-stink because it's using the wrong system for its genre. GURPS is for obsessively crunchy simulations where it's important to know the exact dimensions of your ship's sails and the recurve on your bow. Even if you use GURPS Lite, task resolution is on a bell curve so nothing spectacular ever happens and everything is point-buy to incentivize minmaxing and stacking up as many minor disadvantages as you can. That lends itself to some kinds of games and not others.

>Being this fucking retarded

Anima, to an extent.

Calling someone retarded is not a very compelling argument.

If you want to actually make a point, try to explain how the core mechanics of a system don't affect the tone of the game at all. I think you'll find that there's more to a game than whether it has damage tables for swords, guns, or both. It matters whether a game has classes or point-buy. It matters how task resolution is handles and how often critical results come up (over 15% of the time in FFG Star Wars/Genisys, 10% in D&D, 2% in Call of Cthulhu, less than 1% in GURPS.)

Like he said - imagine being this fucking retarded

>modern trappings and contrivances
What do you mean by this?

>less than 1% in GURPS
That's not how GURPS works.

Probably toilets that flush

Sure it is. The odds of rolling an 18 are 1 in 216. Same for rolling a 3. The odds of rolling either are is 1 in 108, a little less than 1 percent. GURPS' main resolution mechanic is a bell curve where exceptional things hardly ever happen, suitable for a nice grounded hard SF or historical fiction game, but not for some other things.

Yes I've been drawn more and more to this particular aesthetic in general.

Besides. I want my car to have a spot for me to holster my sword and wearing a cape with my expensive suit to show off my royal status and texting on my cell phone while my bodyguards can pull swords and guns out of thin air is a must.

you don't have to imagine, you fucking retard

Also, look how swag this fucker is fighting in a business suit

>It's a medieval setting
>But it also has toothbrushes and showers
I'm not going to complain

>cars
>but no airplanes

Shit setting TBQH.

There's no reason why it can't. These are merely inspirations for settings I'd like to see more of. Besides, it's harder to fight Rocs from the confines of an airplane.

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I would sell my first child to play a good campaign in such a setting

Yes, it's rather nice isn't it? I mix this with the more western style fantasy styles into one when I imagine my game play typically.

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So an idea I had for such a setting involved the development of what was basically Model T style vehicles and the emergency of the transient economy where merchants and service providers would travel to and from various cities and villages bringing people, goods, and trade with them.

The PCs would join an NPC businessman and his brother/sister in a truck they just bought and go on adventures taking jobs and fighting random monsters in various adventures they get caught up in.

I love this aesthetic, and I wish I was creative enough to use it well.

I am working on a setting right now that is based around a sprawling city of beautiful gardens and architecture. They have modern conveniences, but absolutely no industrial trappings to mar the aesthetics. People wear fancy outfits and do cozy things in between venturing outside of the city to go on adventures that preserve the peace of the city.

Your "anachronistic weeb fantasy" art is one of my favorite things; and that artist is a great example of it.

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I like the aesthetic, but japan:

>a race that's just humans with superficial animal bits

Please stop doing this.

I've been wanting to do a setting like that for a long time too, but it can be tough to imagine decent fusion advances in magic tech. A soldier holding an exact ak-47 and also a magic wand without any fusion of science and tech is too cheap. Instead, I want to think, "How would longarms develop with magic around?" And a magic wand strapped to a rifle stock is silly too.

Instead, it would probaly be something like using elemental fire to fuel steam engines instead of coal and that causes a different kind of horrible magic pollution. Maybe instead of developing gas-powered internal cumbustion engines, they manipulate elemental heat and cold to make steam engines more effecient?

>you can now imagine medieval sex without the unwashed genitals, warts and syphilis!

the new final fantasy is another variation of this setting that i like.
I like how uncompromising it is in the strange melding

You forgot working toilets and toilet paper.

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Dont forget self aggrandizement for Adventurers.
Nobody else interrested in worldbuilding such a setting?

What about this idea:
>modern science and understanding, but no automization
>you get your toothbrushes, toilets and refridgerators, but they're all handmade
>a machine gun is only as good as the gunsmith that put it together, plus, it's design is probably more or less unique

comfy.

>that image
why four ears.
why, japan.

maybe hot water sources would be preferable.

would make sense, that keeps the "medieval" bit in it.
But how would such technologies been developed without automatization?
I mean a Toilet would be REALY expensive

I'm making a setting in the 19th-20th that revolves around this, give or take a few advancements (fashion, transportation, medicine, communication, entertainment, consumer products) and stagnation/regressions (naval technology, military weaponry). I've scoured ebay and google books for magazine catalogues, posters, and book articles to get the general feel of the world.

But what really gets me going is making huge adjustments to the subsequent era's dress styles. I've come to the conclusion that Victorian & Era dress style (while fine for its time) is way too elaborate, stuffy, and impractical for women, while dreadfully dull, uninspired, and constricting for men. Atleast until WW1 hits.

I'd like to put social media and wide-use telecommunication in a standard fantasy setting, but that'll make too much problem like then why the hell the society is so primitive, why so low tech level, interchange of ideas, etc. Shame.

>Thread Theme
youtu.be/ruztCDwPs7c

comfy

Maybe telecommunication only works region by region? Different regions use different frequencies or magic to communicate, but pride, infighting, rivalries and threats of war between the top brass prevents the common population from communicating with each other?

Slightly unrealistic amount of skill in blue collar workers.
The plumber can make his own toilet out of local materials, the electrician is spooling his own copper wire and the gunsmith can make a safe ignition mechanism with eyed up measurements.

I have an extreme soft-spot for the style and tone of works like Kino No Tabi, Haibane Renmei or Windaria. It's more akin to magic realism (well, Kino/Renmei at least) than to fantasy, and it has it's own specific charm. For some reason, I find the idea of "soul reclamation industries" that Windaria flat-out presents, and Haibane hints at, particularly fascinating.
Icepick Lodge's Pathologic also has somewhat comparable tone, though it is much less anachronistic.
That said, it's very tricky to nail down, because it's actually not very conductive to speculative fiction.

The lifestyle of a real life modern western, middleclass, household can only be achieved by minor nobles.
For regular peasants:
>telephone calls go via the post office
>sewage goes into a septic tank
>transportation is only public
>a single electronic toy is the envy of the whole street
>most weapons are just swords and knives
Although maybe in the world there exists a town benefitting from natural riches that can afford to go a bit crazy with its public spending

I'm also imagining a yearly bazaar where you go to buy your fashionable cotton and latex clothing for the rest of the year, the newest books and luxury goods

Ok so this now depends on wether or not we want this to be comfy or not.
Lets say we go with the everything is handmade thing.
The everyone going to the post office part, see this is comfy.
Everyone shitting in buckets... less so.
See the first part you mentioned there kind of made me think of how it was in rural areas in my country for quite a long time.
Modernity exists, but it hasnt reached modern day convenience yet for most people.

As for swords as weapons: Even before mass manufacturing firearms all but replaced swords.
I think the Dune argument is a much better one: Its a fantasy world, a high fantasy one.
Rifles probably arent as effective, Battlemages are common and shield spells offer protection from ranged fire, at least for a time. Thus melee weapons are required for an assault

>The Slow Blade penetrates the shield

furthermore armor could be made from fantastical alloys or other reasonings why anachronistic weapons are still in use.
I would say Nausicaa is also a world that operates on this anachronistic mix of weapons and armor

>As for swords as weapons: Even before mass manufacturing firearms all but replaced swords.
That is hardly true.

>The Slow Blade penetrates the shield
See, I don't like that gimmick because it seems like a rule geared towards getting a result, whereas with the no aumotization you can start with a rule and extrapolate what the world would look like because of it.
With the toilets, there's flushing and pipes, not buckets, they just don't go very far, just the septic tank next to the house.

Ok mass production was a thing but Automation was not.
Pike and shotte was a thing you know, so was napoleonic warfare.
Making firearms like that wasnt that hard, ammunition on the otherhand was far easier to make than for conventional missle weapons and training troops was extremley easy.

Youre right it is a gimmick that gets a result, but the same can be said about a lot of things.
A lack of automization would not lead to a lack of gunpowder weapons.

If you REALY want to go deep into it then a world without automatization would not have a lot of things because there was no drive to invent such a thing as production would simply be too constraining to be feasable.

I think the Dune excuse didnt detract from Dune as a setting and it is thematic for a high fantasy setting.

>A lack of automization would not lead to a lack of gunpowder weapons.
A lack of reliable ones.

>this novel goes full Usagi Drop at the end
Thanks for reminding me this trash existed

how do you define reliable gunpowder weapons?
I mean we had reliable gunpowder weapons long before the industrial revolution.

But this is becoming a realy pedantic argument.
I dont see how the argument of a lack of automization is going to lead to the society discribed earlier.

What about Chrono Trigger? Or 1000 AD in that game, at least. Chrono Cross is entirely set in 1010 AD, and has a modern-style musician right alongside knights who use magic. But then you'd have to play Chrono Cross.

People focus way to much on the shield technology of Dune and less on the fact you have people who are trained to superhuman levels of physical and mental abilities.

Why is this fact always ignored? It could even work for such a setting where you have guilds and corporations where, from birth, you are trained to do something to such a degree that literally no one else can do so your group has a monopoly on it. If your guild is the only one who can make the components to a computer because they were trained from a young age the various skills and rituals to do so then so be it.

That said, modern conviences don't have to be to 2018 standards either.

Erm, set in 1020 AD. 1010 AD is when some background events happen that are important to the clusterfuck of a story.

Did you play Everquest mate?

The term you're looking for is "Contemporary fantasy". This encompasses Shin Megami Tensei, Tsukihime, Etrian Odyssey, and other works where it's a fantastical world set close to the "present" day. Anachronistic fantasy would be the Knights of the Round Table using modern technology like radio and computers.

Hell, here's an example; The Flintstones.

>Look at more pics by the artist
>The dark-skinned girl has been raped by monsters, gangbanged by lizardmen, mind controlled into sex, and was a prostitute prior to her finding some friends who don't treat her like a fucktoy
I would honestly read her story in a single sitting. She deserves all the hugs.