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Anlashok
2015-06-25, 09:25 PM
It sort of struck me that most every high fantasy setting I've seen is set in some sort of hodgepodge of medieval western Europe.

What about shifting the clock forward a few hundred years? I've never seen a single setting set in a renaissance/post-renaissance/gunpowder era Europe. Ever. Mind you I'm not talking steampunk here since that's a few degrees forward from that.

Or what about backwards? I don't think I've likewise seen a fully developed fantasy setting that took place during, say... the Roman Empire. Which is weird because it seems like you could do a lot of fun stuff with that.

Actually I could go broader than that. I think I've seen one or two excerpts in a D&D book about cavemen, but by and large I don't think I've ever seen a high fantasy setting that took place at any point in time other than medieval or modern. I guess there's Call of Cthulhu for the 20s-30s though.

Am I wrong on either of those counts or does stuff like that just not exist?

Location-wise I've seen a couple settings set in an Oriental mishmash and a few set in an Arabian mishmash... but only a couple of each. What about, say, a South American setting? High Fantasy Aztecs? Maybe?

Interested in compiling a list of anything people have that isn't just more tolkeinesque medieval not-Europe.

Karl Aegis
2015-06-25, 09:40 PM
If you want High Fantasy Sengoku Era Japan you can always play Tenra Bansho Zero. It also works if you want to play any anime character ever because it can model anything from an anime. Yes, even that. Especially that.

Milo v3
2015-06-25, 09:40 PM
I've got settings from Garden of Eden esque-times and another is set in the stone age. Getting the shops to work in those times was difficult since gear is expected in the systems I was playing with, but after that hurdle they ended up nice settings.

Yora
2015-06-26, 04:40 AM
Define "High Fantasy".

Though Forgotten Realms (especially 2nd edition) seems pretty close.

comicshorse
2015-06-26, 05:34 AM
It sort of struck me that most every high fantasy setting I've seen is set in some sort of hodgepodge of medieval western Europe.

What about shifting the clock forward a few hundred years? I've never seen a single setting set in a renaissance/post-renaissance/gunpowder era Europe. Ever. Mind you I'm not talking steampunk here since that's a few degrees forward from that.



This is pretty much Warhammer Fantasy also I think the CWoD alternate Mage setting was the Renaissance


Actually I could go broader than that. I think I've seen one or two excerpts in a D&D book about cavemen, but by and large I don't think I've ever seen a high fantasy setting that took place at any point in time other than medieval or modern. I guess there's Call of Cthulhu for the 20s-30s though.


There's also Cthulhu settings for the 1880's, Dark Ages and Delta Green which could be used for modern day but is, IMHO, firmly routed in the turn of the Millenium


High Fantasy Aztecs?

There was a DnD setting like this. Matzica, I think


I don't think I've likewise seen a fully developed fantasy setting that took place during, say... the Roman Empire.

There's books for Vampire set in Rome

Khedrac
2015-06-26, 06:38 AM
Define "High Fantasy".
Yora's comment here is actually pretty key - what do you mean by "High Fantasy"?

Definitions vary - for me I use:
High Fantasy - concerns the fate of countries or worlds.
Low Fantasy - concerns the fate of individuals or settlements.
I don't think these are standard - "low fantasy" is more usually to do with atmosphere but they work better for me.

Now practically any setting can support both - whether for novels or rpg campaigns.
What matters is what the DM likes to run or the author wants to write and publishers think will sell.

Now, in the English-speaking world the dominant settings and based on medieval Europe because that's where the culture roots came from.
Probably the next groups are "Classical" - i.e. Ancient Greece/Rome and Norse, and for similar reasons.

If you examine native cultures (North American, Central American, Maori, Native Australian and Celtic to name but a few) you will find there is plenty of depth to adapt in the same way, but people are less familiar with them so they produce/read/use them less. (Cannot go into why as that is firmly covered by the RL Politics ban.)

So, assuming you want RPG settings, well you just have to look outside the box, and remember that the high/low fantasy is mainly up to the DM.

1. Dark Sun - harder to do High Fantasy given the power level difference but designed to be different.
2. Glorantha - originally the cultures were not supposed to be based on real-world. It still has a lot of unique stuff, but it is mainly pre-Bronze Age even when RL cultures are being used as the template (the Orlanthi tend to be portrayed as like the Celts).
3. Pendragon Pass (Chivalry and Sorcery) - pushing it here but King Arthur's court should be pre-middle ages (if only just).
4. Loads and loads of Oriental settings, e.g. Legend of the Five Rings.
5. Vikings - quite a few Viking settings out there, even if most seem to be source books for existing games.
6. Most systems can be adapted easily for an Ancient Greece campaign (but do Hercules not Xeena - she mixed up way too many time periods).
etc.

TheCountAlucard
2015-06-26, 07:25 AM
The world of Creation in the Exalted setting is not Earth, and does not correspond to one particular locale or aesthetic; that said, the places of Creation are often inspired by the history, politics, culture, et cetera., of real-world places, be they European, Asian, Central American, or African. Many even incorporate elements of multiple such places.

That said, there's also a layer of fantasy gods and demons, and mythic monsters and heroes in this delicious cake, so it can sometimes be easy to miss some of these tasty layers.

Maglubiyet
2015-06-26, 07:38 AM
Are you only talking about D&D/D20? Deadlands and Weird Wars are 19th century and mid-20th respectively. There was a D20 Trojan War setting.

Of course GURPS has setting books for Arabian Nights, Ice Age, many eras in China's history, ancient Rome, and lots of others.

Comet
2015-06-26, 09:59 AM
Check out Glorantha. Everything from stone age hunter gatherers to barbarian cattle thieves to a massive cosmopolitan empire. And it can get very, very high fantasy.

EccentricCircle
2015-06-27, 12:09 PM
As for Renaissance settings, both the Warhammer world and the Golarion setting from pathfinder are gunpowder rich settings. The Iron Kingdoms takes it a bit further, creating more of a steampunk feel.

D&D went through a phase of making settings for different parts of the forgotten realms during second edition. Kara Tur is the Orient, The Horde is the Mongolian empire. Al Qadim is the best supported and is Arabian Nights and Maztica is the central Americas, with knights from Faerun taking the place of conquistadors. The far east has been done a few times in different ways, perhaps most notably by Legend of the Five Rings.
I have a d20 book by necromancer press called Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia, which is quite fun for detailing the dawn of civilisation, there are also two books from the folks behind the Scarred Lands setting detailing Arthurian and Olympian worlds. More recently for D&D Eberron has a lot of non European settings within it, and has a sort of steampunk magitech feel.
So stuff is out there, even if its not the default.

dream
2015-06-27, 01:45 PM
Hm, lessee;

GURPS Fantasy (which features Roma Arcana, a High-Fantasy Rome that never fell)
GURPS Horror (which has fantasy features)
GURPS Banestorm
GURPS Infinite Worlds
GURPS Land Out of Time (Prehistoric setting)
GURPS Runal (Japanese fantasy)
GURPS Crusades
GURPS Hot Spots (Constantinople & Renaissance Florence)
GURPS Atlantis
GURPS Conan
GURPS Camelot
GURPS Celtic Myth
GURPS Egypt
GURPS Greece
GURPS Ice Age
GURPS Imperial Rome
GURPS Places of Mystery
GURPS Swashbucklers
Ect., ect., ect. :smalltongue:


If there's a setting or time period, GURPS probably has a book for it. Most are OP, but you can find PDFs & available print books at http://www.sjgames.com/store/.

Enjoy!

Roxxy
2015-06-28, 05:20 PM
I set most of my Pathfinder games in an analog of America or Australia, rather than Europe. I am very much into verisimilitude and maintaining a theme, the type of person who can't stand a ninja or samurai running about a Europesque setting. The thing is, the people I play with are pretty divided between who wants to play people who are European and who wants to play people who are Asian. This is why I love using America analogs. My players can all have what they want, and I can have my setting make thematic and logical sense, because a territory based off of California geography with a history of colonialism and immigration could of course have Europeans and Asians encountering each other on a daily basis. I'm also from California, so I have fun writing climate and geography. Plus, I get the opportunity to have Native American, Mexican, and African themes, and the history of colonization has so much fuel for storytelling. It just sort of seems to really work out well.

Closet_Skeleton
2015-06-28, 05:59 PM
Yora's comment here is actually pretty key - what do you mean by "High Fantasy"?

Definitions vary - for me I use:
High Fantasy - concerns the fate of countries or worlds.
Low Fantasy - concerns the fate of individuals or settlements.
I don't think these are standard - "low fantasy" is more usually to do with atmosphere but they work better for me.

High Fantasy basically means Tolkein derived fantasy, which doesn't actually mean "exactly like Tolkien" but more 'Tolkeinesque' or "inspired by Tolkein but lacking a few key elements of Tolkein that didn't catch on as well as elves".

Low fantasy on the other hand is mostly an oppositional genre that takes some form like "high fantasy but with X trope missing or reversed". Even if you try to define it better it still kind of requires High Fantasy to exist, it can't work on its own the way similar genres like "horror fantasy" can.

Sword and Sorcery (aka Robert E. Howard inspired fantasy) can sometimes be indistinguishable from high fantasy but is still separated thanks to its lineage.

So High Fantasy is pretty much going to be 'in a pseudo-european mishmash' because that's part of what makes it High Fantasy rather than some other sub genre. You can have a High Fantasy game in an oriental setting but that's because you can be flexible in any genre. A non-European High Fantasy is like a Detective novel where the characters aren't technically detectives but still solve crimes in a manner roughly following the formula.

I think that sometimes settings get misblamed for being 'too western european'. A lot of settings are very original (or at least ahistorical) and only really share a few features like knights and some styles of equipment with a historical period of Europe but get lumped in with the European settings because they don't have Katana or dark skinned people.

Sometimes is just as much the audience as the writer whose assuming that fantasy much be Medieval European. There's nothing western European about most fantasy pantheons but they're rarely pointed out as a foreign element the way a Kensei would be.


This is pretty much Warhammer Fantasy also I think the CWoD alternate Mage setting was the Renaissance

Warhammer fantasy is usually considered Low Fantasy or Grim and Gritty Fantasy. Its basically a High Fantasy world but with more plagues, exaggerated Gothic architecture and creepy sexual daemons.

comicshorse
2015-06-29, 09:11 AM
High Fantasy basically means Tolkein derived fantasy, which doesn't actually mean "exactly like Tolkien" but more 'Tolkeinesque' or "inspired by Tolkein but lacking a few key elements of Tolkein that didn't catch on as well as elves".

Low fantasy on the other hand is mostly an oppositional genre that takes some form like "high fantasy but with X trope missing or reversed". Even if you try to define it better it still kind of requires High Fantasy to exist, it can't work on its own the way similar genres like "horror fantasy" can.



Is there a recognized definition for what is High and Low fantasy ? My personal definitions would be different to those you posted but it occurs to me I have no idea where I got them from and could have just made them up myself

Milo v3
2015-06-29, 09:16 AM
High Fantasy basically means Tolkein derived fantasy, which doesn't actually mean "exactly like Tolkien" but more 'Tolkeinesque' or "inspired by Tolkein but lacking a few key elements of Tolkein that didn't catch on as well as elves".

Low fantasy on the other hand is mostly an oppositional genre that takes some form like "high fantasy but with X trope missing or reversed". Even if you try to define it better it still kind of requires High Fantasy to exist, it can't work on its own the way similar genres like "horror fantasy" can.


That's... a strange definition. Even wikipedia describes it better:

High fantasy is defined as fantasy fiction set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the real, or "primary" world. The secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary, or "real" world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical elements.
Basically, the closer it is to real life, the lower it is, the more "fantastic" the higher the fantasy. Since... well, there's higher levels fantasy involved. It's not really complex. High fantasy existed long before Tolkien, it's just that some of his works are considered high quality High Fantasy by some people, so many people copied him.

Eldan
2015-06-29, 09:32 AM
Warhammer Fantasy is quite famously late Renaissance/early Baroque high fantasy. Pike & Shot & Spells. It features mish-mash American cultures too, via conquistadores.

That said, given how strangely disconnected many settings are from actual historical periods... a lot of them seem to wildly combine the dark ages, antiquity, the high middle ages and the Renaissance (plate armour!) into one.

There's quite a few fantasy pirate settings, too, which would mean 17th/18th century.

Tolkien himself is interesting. I don't think it's supposed to be Medieval, it has quite a few dark age-ish elements, especially if considered as British pseudo-mythology, with Roman and Anglosaxon-equivalent cultures.

Ralanr
2015-06-29, 09:37 AM
Huh...I always assumed Wuxia was basically eastern high fantasy.

Edit: I think Tolkien meant for his works to be more ancient Europe than medieval. Though considering how much easier it is to make steel weapons look "elvish" this is probably why it's seen more as medieval.

Heck I don't even know off the top of my head if the middle ages commonly employed steel weaponry. But I pretty much think of steel swords when I think middle ages. I need to get my facts straight.

Segev
2015-06-29, 09:53 AM
The novel series Codex Alera by Jim Bucher is high fantasy that takes place in a decidedly Roman-flavored setting.

Dragonstar is D&D-flavored high fantasy IN SPACE (and with a space opera setting).

Spelljammer is D&D-flavored medieval-ish high fantasy IN SPACE (which is all the stranger for it).

Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality novels take place 20 minutes into the future, for the most part, and declare that magic was "rediscovered" a few years ago and is now a part of everyday life. Definitely high fantasy, too, since the main characters are beings such as Fate, Time, Death, Mother Earth, etc.

Rifts is a Palladium-system setting set in a post-post-Apocalyptic future where the ruins of the old Earth have been rebuilt into something more advanced in some places, and haven't recovered in others, with magic tearing across the world in highly dangerous ways (which is part of why it's so slow to recover). But it's quite high fantasy.

Exalted'd First Age is rife with so much high magic that is understood to the point of technology that it's like a planet-bound space opera setting in a lot of ways, and is most definitely High Fantasy.

MrZJunior
2015-06-29, 10:25 AM
I've made two high fantasy settings with a renaissance feel to them. One was based on the Italian Renaissance and the other on the Byzantine Empire.

Yora
2015-06-30, 11:10 AM
Edit: I think Tolkien meant for his works to be more ancient Europe than medieval. Though considering how much easier it is to make steel weapons look "elvish" this is probably why it's seen more as medieval.

Heck I don't even know off the top of my head if the middle ages commonly employed steel weaponry. But I pretty much think of steel swords when I think middle ages. I need to get my facts straight.

Iron Age is even pre-ancient.