The Standard Fantasy Setting: what new things can be done with it?

[Goilveig]

If you think that for setting to be interesting you must include surreal otherworldy terrain and never before seen races, you are direly wrong. See JRPGs and asian MMOs, which work starting to style and forget about substance. Planescape is't good because it has bat**** insane stuff in it, it's good because it has a lot of substance. It's possible to make a setting which has only humans as playable race and big-bads as everyone else, and still work out (Diablo).

 

I am a firm believer that every great game needs to have a 'hill to stand on' - something that separates them from the vast sea of other games. Novel settings aren't the only possible hill to stand on, but they are *a* hill to stand on. Western medieval fantasy RPGs make up 95% of the genre, so a setting change makes an easy hill to stand on.

 

I don't have any particular preference between bizarre settings like Planescape or Dark Sun and more traditional fantasy settings like Forgotten Realms. I think you can tell interesting and engaging stories in either kind of setting.

 

An interesting and engaging story isn't usually enough for a great RPG. Since story is at the heart of the RPG, an interesting and engaging story is necessary for a great game, but it's rarely sufficient. Story is a difficult hill to stand on, because there are already so many good stories told in RPGs. Few indeed are the RPGs that set themselves apart purely by story. Most of the great games with great stories also set themselves apart by unique and memorable settings, etc.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

The "new" thing that I would like to see done in a traditional fantasy setting (or any fantasy setting, really) would be to create greater ethnolinguistic diversity. The big problem that I have with fantasy settings in general is that their non-human races are almost always monocultural/monolingual (as though language and culture are passed on genetically or something). This annoys me to no end. Dwarves who live in the Kingdom of Narnik should not have the same language and culture as the Dwarves who live 1000 miles away in Erkhhadn. Within the single "race" (to use the term as it is used in fantasy settings) that we have on Earth, there is an incredible range of diversity. On the Earth, humans speak over FIVE THOUSAND LANGUAGES divided into over 200 families most of which can be further subdivided into smaller sub-families. It sounds like Obsidian may be addressing this problem with Project Eternity, so my big issue seems to be under control. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

 

I agree with this. What would be really cool to see is the game mixing things up in non-traditional ways, and a little language diversity instead of everyone and everything everywhere all astonishingly speaking the exact same language in the exact same accent would add a nice flavor to each region.

 

I would also like to see them truly examine how the fantastic elements in a society might have changed its development over time compared to our own customs, rather than just throwing fantasy elements over a rip-off of real world customs. For example, one thing that has always bugged me is the prevalence of graveyards in games like Baldur's Gate, where you almost inevitably encounter crypts filled with shambling skeletons and zombies and ghouls. In our world, a graveyard is meant as a memorial to the dead, a quiet and peaceful place for paying your respects. If you lived in a world in which a random crazy person could, theoretically, cast a spell that turns the corpses of your dead grandparents into walking horrors to shamble about and kill at his command, don't you think cremation would be a little more popular than a whole field filled with a potential army for any such crazy person?

 

That's just one example. God only knows how radically something like friggin' resurrection spells would alter the course of a developing society. I hope they honestly consider such questions: how would magical powers, like the presence of 'souls' that give people supernatural abilities, change the shape and mentality of a given developing culture from the way our own cultures developed?

Edited September 30, 2012 by Death Machine Miyagi

[rjshae]

What I am sick of are lost civilizations that were extremely advanced and prolific. If they were really advanced then why is the current setting basicly the recovery from an apocalypse. Lord of the Rings was that and it annoyed me when books would harp on and on about the glories of the past.

 

Err... ancient Rome, Greece, and China? Put those in the context of the medieval Europe and that's what you'll have.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

Also, a pet peeve: can we stop with the poorly explained Medieval Stasis? There are fantasy worlds, even otherwise realistic ones, where people have been trapped at knights and lances and broadswords, apparently, since the dawn of time. Some explain it, some don't. At the very least give a good explanation why the technology remains at the exact same level for millenia at a time. It always bugs me whenever I see it.

 

Note: I'm guessing that won't be as much of a problem here, as its been mentioned there are some firearms to be seen. Still, it'd be cool to know that it wasn't a case of 'we had castles and feudalism for the last ten millenia, then a couple of years ago someone invented a gun.'

[rjshae]

Also, a pet peeve: can we stop with the poorly explained Medieval Stasis? There are fantasy worlds, even otherwise realistic ones, where people have been trapped at knights and lances and broadswords, apparently, since the dawn of time. Some explain it, some don't. At the very least give a good explanation why the technology remains at the exact same level for millenia at a time. It always bugs me whenever I see it.

 

Note: I'm guessing that won't be as much of a problem here, as its been mentioned there are some firearms to be seen. Still, it'd be cool to know that it wasn't a case of 'we had castles and feudalism for the last ten millenia, then a couple of years ago someone invented a gun.'

 

Perhaps it's become a stagnant culture because everybody who matters is wrapped up in the broken souls issue? Or maybe there's a book-hating deity who deep fries anybody that even thinks about making a printing press? Perhaps the two are interlinked somehow?

[Oner]

PE isn't stagnating, as far as we can tell right now. Firearms are a recent invention.

 

Medieval stagnation usually has one simple explanation: the abundance of magic. Why bother inventing lifts when a guy in a robe can mumble at the platform and it'll start going up and down every time you snap your fingers?

[Gurkog]

What I am sick of are lost civilizations that were extremely advanced and prolific. If they were really advanced then why is the current setting basicly the recovery from an apocalypse. Lord of the Rings was that and it annoyed me when books would harp on and on about the glories of the past.

 

Err... ancient Rome, Greece, and China? Put those in the context of the medieval Europe and that's what you'll have.

 

Nah, I am talking about the ones where everything was better in the extinct civilization. Our world progressed after those empires died out, but in a lot of fantasy worlds progress is halted or regresses.