Mythic Locations

[Callos_DeTerran]

Lemme preface this with the fact this nothing to do with mechanics or anything like that, but I am going to refer to one thing in particular that brought up this topic. I really, really like Pathfinder's Mythic Adventures book and...well..just about everything to do with it, when it's done right.

Sadly, I've only really gotten the chance to play mythic rather than run it and one thing is kinda holding me back...Mythic encounters I can figure out. Mythic quests, sure.

...I'm having some trouble imagining some suitably mythic...well...locations and set pieces! Stuff that should drop a player's jaw and make them pause for a minute at the visualization of it, both awe-inspiring and vile ones. So if anyone has any ideas or pictures, please give a poor DM a hand!

[Actana]

Whenever someone brings up the topic of mythic locations and the sort, my mind immediately goes to this song. It's perhaps less concrete than a picture or a prose description, but to me it encapsulates perfectly the sort of atmosphere a legendary place radiates.

[Kane0]

Could always look to videogames with all their beautiful setpieces and environments. God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Uncharted, Condemned, anything really.

You could even go way back to Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, etc. Pick a genre that matches the feel of what your looking for and go delving!

Coincidentally the same also applies to movies.

Edit: If one thing screams mythic location to me it would be a planar place like Dis or Sigil. Imagine having a massive street brawl with devils of all ranks in the burning hot and ever-shifting alleysways of the iron city. Now thats cinematic.
Or being lost in the Grey Wastes or the outlands, fending off gargantuan beasts in the beastlands, prostrating yourself in front of deities in the opulent palaces of mount celestia, or wading through a chaotic battlefield on some unknown layer of the abyss, fighting off wave after wave of demons while trying to navigate a hellish mire.
Imagine that... yeah...

[The Evil DM]

Do not forget to look into mythical places from real historical legends, Hades, Olympus, Valhalla and other legends from our own ancient stories. There are many to choose from.

[Yora]

I never really understood what sets mythic apart from big or powerful.

[Kane0]

Treating each limb of a monster as a different creature?
Possibly the amount of lore and heresay involved.
How memorable it is?

When you think about it, just replace 'mythic' with 'epic' and you could be looking at the same thing.

[Actana]

I never really understood what sets mythic apart from big or powerful.

As far as I see it, this is a case of "mythic things are big and powerful, but big and powerful things are not necessarily mythic". Mythic involves not only history and lore behind the object, but also a certain amount of ambiguity within that history. Essentially mythic means "from myths", which itself tells a lot about the meaning: it's long in the past, has a certain amount of significance to it, and its sources aren't necessarily entirely truthful since so much has been lost since it existed. The castle a current king builds might rival that of the mythic kings past, but that castle isn't really so much mythic as it is significant and perhaps even legendary.

I think this also begs another question: the difference between mythic and legendary. The way I see it (again, I can't speak for others, let alone how it is used within RPG books), is that mythic objects are firmly far in the past, while legendary objects can be more contemporary: a current king can be legendary if he has made a significant enough mark in history, but he probably won't be a mythic king until much later when a lot of what made him legendary has turned into myths (which, depending on the storytelling traditions, can be anything from centuries for oral traditions to thousands of years for more advanced written sources).

For an example (that not everyone might get), Dark Souls 1 had a very mythic setting. Lots of big figures, ambiguous lore behind them and the world feels lost in the past. Whereas Dark Souls 2 features a more legendary setting with a legendary king who feels more current and we get more accurate knowledge about him (we even get to meet him eventually). Both settings are big and powerful in their own ways, but they still differ in other regards.

[hiryuu]

Okay! Hmm. I like giant floating mountains, those are always cool.

Here is a small little hamlet:

Spoiler

Show

One of my favorites:

Spoiler

Show

Here's a guy casting "Augury":

Spoiler

Show

"Oh, they need to see me back at the temple guys."

Spoiler

Show

Always a classic. Imagine the dungeons you could build inside the rest of them!

Spoiler

Show

[TheCountAlucard]

Might read some Lord Dunsany. "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" is a good start.