Real World Inspirations for Fantasy Locales

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Apologies that I didn't save where the high rise came from. The other is a fancy lens setup all-sky photo off the NASA app, but it makes a nice pic.

I'd imagine them both being Paranoia spoofs but that's just me. The high rise as a luxury resort with an insane director catering to a building full of lunatic ultra rich bored tech startup CEOs and the pcs as menial robots wired to follow Asimov's three laws. The planetoid as a tiny green forest moon where the PCs are some ewok like species trying to survive and deal with this weird over-mind spirit that maybe sort of inhabits everything, makes pretty much no sense talking through various stoned shamans who keep vying for power, and directly controls only weather & lightning strikes.
 

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"The medieval fortress Kokalyanski Urvich is located on the right steep bank of the river Iskar. It has been of great importance in the defense of Sofia over the centuries. In the area you can find several monasteries, which together with the fortress form the Urvich fortress-monastery complex."
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BTW, the word "Urvich" is derived by "Urva", meaning "precipice, steep place".

If there's one thing we can 'blame' Tolkien for doing to Fantasy Gaming, it's that. Almost every other game not based on Middle Earth has nothing even remotely like it, save for everything is pastoral, medieval English in scenery.
Sorry, man, but you can't blame JRRT for that. He had the dark halls of Moria, and more.
His imitators, however, are another matter altogether - I consider them the only ones to be worse than REH's imitators. And if you know anything about my opinion on REH's imitators*, you'd know this is a slur.



*Which generally starts with "Conan written by anyone but REH isn't the same character, just one with an accidentally similar name" and then actually gets going.
 
"The medieval fortress Kokalyanski Urvich is located on the right steep bank of the river Iskar. It has been of great importance in the defense of Sofia over the centuries. In the area you can find several monasteries, which together with the fortress form the Urvich fortress-monastery complex."
54901cc4572db.jpg

BTW, the word "Urvich" is derived by "Urva", meaning "precipice, steep place".


Sorry, man, but you can't blame JRRT for that. He had the dark halls of Moria, and more.
His imitators, however, are another matter altogether - I consider them the only ones to be worse than REH's imitators. And if you know anything about my opinion on REH's imitators*, you'd know this is a slur.



*Which generally starts with "Conan written by anyone but REH isn't the same character, just one with an accidentally similar name" and then actually gets going.
Two points. That's what I meant with JRRT, it's his imitators that are in gaming, most of us in the West have read his books and those of us who have made fantasy settings (Including myself I sadly admit) whether 'official' or not have fallen into copying him. D&D 4e tried to be more fantastical, with it's 'Earth Motes', floating chunks of land with orbits around certain spots. Runequest is pretty pastoral and tame. It's like the fantasy genre only goes wild with the races, rather than everything.

Second point: I am NOT a fan of the Conan Pastiche writers either. Not one of them that I have EVER read seems to be able to get him right. It's not like Conan is complex either which utterly baffles me.
 
Two points. That's what I meant with JRRT, it's his imitators that are in gaming, most of us in the West have read his books and those of us who have made fantasy settings (Including myself I sadly admit) whether 'official' or not have fallen into copying him. D&D 4e tried to be more fantastical, with it's 'Earth Motes', floating chunks of land with orbits around certain spots. Runequest is pretty pastoral and tame. It's like the fantasy genre only goes wild with the races, rather than everything.
Well, you could at least say "the races and the pantheon"...or Thed might want to have a word with you. (I advise you to say "no" to the offer of conversation...:devil:)
Second point: I am NOT a fan of the Conan Pastiche writers either. Not one of them that I have EVER read seems to be able to get him right. It's not like Conan is complex either which utterly baffles me.
Oh, but REH's Conan is pretty complex as characters go, it's sophistication that he lacks:grin:!
 
Well, you could at least say "the races and the pantheon"...or Thed might want to have a word with you. (I advise you to say "no" to the offer of conversation...:devil:)
Tolkien's 'pantheon' is pretty much Christianity, most other Fantasy games tend to the Grecian.
Oh, but REH's Conan is pretty complex as characters go, it's sophistication that he lacks:grin:!
I would disagree, his motives are simple, his goal direct. That's what makes him appealing, he knows what he wants and doesn't hesitate. He's also protective of women, in a rough sort of way. He's not overly conflicted or philosophical.
 
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I added location captions to the first set of pictures
 
Two points. That's what I meant with JRRT, it's his imitators that are in gaming, most of us in the West have read his books and those of us who have made fantasy settings (Including myself I sadly admit) whether 'official' or not have fallen into copying him.

In my view the two biggest traps in imitating Tolkien are (1) writing too much history and cosmogony and (2) relying too much on having enemy or evil races. After a couple of false starts I designed my successful fantasy setting with no cosmogony, only eight years of history with 68 years of sketchy past, and used it for adventures inspired more by Alexandre Dumas pere than JRRT. That is, adventures were personal-scale conflicts within society.

The setting was a large tropical archipelago of jungle-clad and coral-fringed islands like the Phillipines or the Malay Archipelago, the local racial type was similar to the Austronesians, and the culture and politics were made of borrowings from mediaeval Japan, Indonesia before Islam, ancient India, classical Greece, and Restoration England. There were no orcs.

It suited me.
 
Tolkien's 'pantheon' is pretty much Christianity, most other Fantasy games tend to the Grecian.
Well, Glorantha isn't like most games, then:thumbsup:.

I would disagree, his motives are simple, his goal direct. That's what makes him appealing, he knows what he wants and doesn't hesitate. He's also protective of women, in a rough sort of way. He's not overly conflicted or philosophical.
I said a complex character, not a conflicted or overly philosophical one:grin:!
 
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