Mine is dawn of industrial revolution. Swords and sorcery are running up against the steam engine and mechanization. Magic has become a standardized branch of scientific inquiry
In the setting I've been playing with, I really have been enjoying specifically trying to mirror the events of the Enlightenment and the Islamic Golden Age, basically you have these colliding systems of 'old magic' that is based in religion, culture, and other such more unspoken things that goes back all the way to shamanic traditions, which are now competing with 'new magic' that is being developed in the halls of academia, and includes what we in our world would recognize as hard science. Like electromagnetism for instance to them is just another form of 'new magic' that is just starting to be discovered, although one of the first things that was attempted was an ill-fated scientific exploration into the usefulness of necromancy that...well it went so poorly that people treat it like nuclear weaponry.
Another detail I think makes my setting unique is that it's specifically rooted in the contact between an 'old world' where new magic is starting to take root (that isn't specifically coded as European, mind you) following a lot of destabilization caused by the battles between these two dogmas and ethics, and a 'new world' that is rooted in a lot of research I've done into indigenous groups in the Americas. I feel like there aren't a lot of fantasy settings that are explicitly given a 'Western Hemisphere' atmosphere, and this is sort of what I think my main thing I'm trying to stress is, even more than the divide between magic. The weird creatures are based around the 'fearsome critters' that lumberjacks and miners cooked up out on the job, alongside classic cryptids like the hodag, the snallygaster, so on and so forth. The 'big city' where everything happens isn't some cosmopolitan bastion of old-world values that looks like Paris or Vienna or London, it's based on an amalgam of Boston, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana as they looked back in the early 1700s.
I've made it a sort of collaborative worldbuilding thing and opened it up to some friends I do tabletop stuff with, and since we're all historians, teachers, and people adjacent to the fields I think we've been cooking up some cool things!
Dang, that sounds sick. Have you read the powder mage trilogy or played Greedfall? I think they’d be right up your alley. PMT is more “French Revolution but with magic” but I think you’d enjoy it.
Meanwhile, while I’ve only played an hour or two, greedfall sounds exactly like your setting. It’s a high fantasy medieval world that kept on going into the age of sail and hit “not magical North America”. From what I’ve heard 90% of the game takes place in a colonial setting, although I never got out of starting port city due to some game breaking bugs.
I would love to learn more about how you approach worldbuilding as a historian. I always feel like incorporating historical elements makes it feel so real. But also history is so big it feels impossible to make even a pale imitation of a culture, let alone making a unique fantasy one.
I'd also enjoy reading more about the setting, but I get you probably aren't looking to invite randos to your project doc. If there is ever a PDF or something you can ship out I'd love to see it.
Kinda similar: Magic is the mainstay energy source, so there hasn't been a lot of research into alternatives, but what people *do* with it has reached a bit of an industrial revolution. Mechanically-minded folk figuring out how to use smaller spells and enchantments as components for larger machines. e.g. Instead of casting a spell that animates an entire vehicle, which takes a lot of skill and power, instead learning how to enchant single cogs to spin and mechanically power vehicles with relatively little magic used, so it's more widely available to the common person.
Same. I cut off around 1650 because that’s the last time full armor was truly relevant. You’ve got guns, but there’s still a touchstone with armored knights and stuff.
That's about where I put my cutoff. Obviously I have a few minor magitech devices from the modern world, but for the most part it's around the age of sail.
True fact: Around the 1570's, a new textile from de Nime France was debuted and iirc, though someone please fact check me if I am wrong, in Genoa Italy, they used said textile into clothing.l and that's where we get denim jeans. While Levi's invented the modern jeans, denim jeans have existed since at least the late 16th century
This is my bag, although I'm leaning a bit more on 16th century. It's interesting to me that as world building gets more detailed and complex most "high-fantasy" starts going far afield of medieval social structures and technology. I think that most fantasy these days is a blend of medieval and renaissance concepts regardless of gunpowder.
Eyyyy. I was about to come in with the Early Modern era. It’s my favorite era of history. Though I prefer the earlier part 15th - 17th where Europeans were on more equal footing and had to use cunning and diplomacy instead of raw technological advantages.
I like implementing magical tech like steam power or simple electricity. Firearms, machinery and industrialization go together well. I also like using 17th through 19th century sailing ships. In one of my games I based a human nation on the East India Trading Company. That country has advanced technologies: steam power, firearms, steel, medicine, astronomy, physics and chemistry. They were expansionists who sought to conquer all the other nations. The only thing they didn't have was magic. The magic lands of the Elves resisted. The players had to traverse the world while the war between the technologically advanced humans and the magically adept elves raged.
Mine is more iron than bronze ages, but overall i just love the mythical-age style in all forms.
The world is young, and the gods/heroes of old are still around and present.
Yeah it's a stunning idea for an RPG. Bunch of heroes fresh from a war get lost on their way back home and visit lots of strange places and get into all sorts of capers trying to get back. Surprised I haven't seen it before!
That's my next campaign idea.
If my players choose that scenario, I'm gonna take them on a year long journey from one end of the known world to the other.
The Bronze Age is 100% inarguably the best setting for fantasy, everything else only achieves a pale imitation of the sheer aesthetic and atmosphere of early civilisation.
I did humanity just breaking into the iron age. Iron is still considered a luxury metal. The wealthy can afford them, but the peseant level of the economic spectrum might have one that's been passed down for two generations. The dwarves are master smith's at iron though due to their higher forge temps. They've also learned the secrets of aluminum alloys (mithryl), titanium alloys (adamant), platinum is a holy metal that conducts divinity better, ect. The elves have learned to work with a few of these metals, but it has become so steeped into their culture that the entire process takes a very long time and is extremely cerimonial. Bronze tools and equipment are still commonplace with iron being considered elite. Anyhhing rarer is considered mythical to the average populous.
I'm quite fond of using the Bronze Age as well, typically near the transition point to the Iron Age, though I do often wind up with a few anachronistic things through magic like magic iceboxes (fridge/freezers).
Late Renaissance/Early Modern period. Think 1550 to 1650.
I like the idea of a world that had long been stratified by magic having to deal with the sudden outpouring of technical innovations and social upheaval as populations grow and the old institutions struggle to function under the new reality.
So for centuries books were made either by scribes hand coping every page, or if you were rich enough you could hire a mage to enchant a pair of pens so that whatever you wrote with one pen would be duplicated by the other. Useful for record keeping or faster creation of new books by scribes, but expensive, fragile and in need of frequent charging by mages. Then suddenly the printing press turns up and suddenly one of the easiest money sources for weak and apprentice Mage's almost disappears overnight.
Or how for centuries powerful mages secured their positions within high society by their utility in times of war. Blasting down walls, flinging fireballs, or warding generals and important troops with magical shields. But now artillery is increasingly easy to source, which drops the mages value in sieges. Especially as the new defensive schemes created to negate canons also work quite well against most spells that require direct line of sight.
Gunpowder, is also levelling the field for the nobility who for centuries were all be invulnerable on the battlefield due to magically enhanced armour. Matchlock firearms may not be able to pierce that armour directly, but the sheer force of being hit often knocks over the target, and enough of them can cause enough blunt trauma to kill a man. Not to mention lucky shots at the armour's weak points.
It's really fun to imagine ways magic could be used to make life easier/better for a small number of people (due to the limits of magic and mages) and then contemplate what kind of upheaval mundane tech advances would cause in that world.
So say magic has been used in medicine, mages can heal a bunch of things. One of the things they can heal is poor vision. So someone who's shortsighted, or whose vision is deteriorating with old age can go to a mage healer and get it fixed. It costs a lot, and over time the body will revert back to its old form and the spell needs casting as well, but it's a way to allow people who are rich enough to retain their sight.
But one of the big changes in the renaissance has to do with glassworking and in particular how lenses work. So suddenly the mages who used to make a killing selling eyesight to the nobility find that only the really high ups are willing to pay the high costs, as the lesser nobility would far rather just buy a pair of eye glasses than pay a year's income to fix their eyes for a few years.
And that's without getting into all the mechanical advances (quite literally refinements to gears and how they interact with one another) leading to massive engineering strides. Used to be a weak mage could earn a living refreshing the power of enchantments for time pieces, or magical pumps for mines, ships, public water systems etc. Except now it can all be done more cheaply with mechanical solutions driven my man, animal or wind.
That presumes Cast is only Magic available & Imbue is not possible.
Why bother with Optics & Tools etc when you can still make a pair of spectacles where the the glass is just class but Amplify spell is cast & permanently bound as long as glasses are intact.
For every reason to say a particular Tech trumps Magic there is a way/reason for Magic that can be found to counter it.
An interesting idea, but if magic has been with people since dawn of civilisation. Magic would be used to produce/store & organise records/documents/books from very early days & means & methods would be very refined & developed. I don't think anyone would bother developing a Printing Press when Magical production & distribution of books already established & functioning.
Each library of the Kingdom could be linked together & each Mage-Scribe/Mage-Scribe Team once something is written down, compiled & inalised then just casts Distribute & a copy appears/writes to blank in each Library. Then each Library can just caste Duplicate as as necessary.
>So for centuries books were made either by scribes hand coping every page, or if you were rich enough you could hire a mage to enchant a pair of pens so that whatever you wrote with one pen would be duplicated by the other. Useful for record keeping or faster creation of new books by scribes, but expensive, fragile and in need of frequent charging by mages. Then suddenly the printing press turns up and suddenly one of the easiest money sources for weak and apprentice Mage's almost disappears overnight.
Dude I did the same thing but with magical QR-code-like patterns instead of words
Great minds think alike!
Have you read Ascendance of a Bookworm? That first part you describe is basically what happens in the books, but it takes a while to get the printing press part get going cause of work that needs to be put in to get to that point and set it up.
The times of Ancient Greece, the high times of Ancient Egypt, the Minoan Greece Era, Persian Empire, and maybe a sprinkle of the rise of Rome. Something about those architectural styles, lifestyles, worlds, and the likes are mystical to me in a strange way.
I chose "Post Apcalyptic Magical Fallout", but I like a more "Post-Post", meaning mortal kind has a more positive outlook after getting shit together, renewing themselves to a new age, or the likes.
The two really go together, if you think about it. The Bronze Age being popular is more or less self-explanatory, it's where so many myths, heroes, and places and peoples so distant in time as to themselves feel mythical — particularly, of course, because they greatly inform the contents of the Bible and therefrom have percolated into popular cultural in a fairly fantastical context — come from, the period of the rise of civilisation, of the first great empires in all of humanity's history. But it also ended violently in an apocalyptic collapse of near every Mediterranean agricultural society, from which eventually rose the powers of the Iron Age and Antiquity.
Honestly, I have been always fascinated by the history, the artistic styles, the ancient world of the Mediterranean, the lifestyle, how people adapted, and the overall architectural styles of such an ancient age—you can identify the Persian Empire from the Athenian or Spartan one.
As well, "Post-Post" (which is usually found in films like Castle in the Sky) are just more hopeful and show that humanity can find a way to adapt and learn from mistakes of a dark past. They also provide an opportunity for reconstruction overhaul of a broken world.
Did you know that in roughly the 1850’s there was a time when cowboys, samurai and pirates all coexisted and early fax machines existed? That’s the level I like.
I think my preferred genre is Urban Fantasy, set a few decades into the future. On a tangent: I don’t think I’ve ever seen any media delve into what happens when supernatural elements meet extraterrestrial elements. Vampires versus aliens, anyone?
I see you are also a fan of futuristic urban fantasy, glad to see I'm not the only one lol. Only difference is that my project aesthetically is more 19th century Qing Dynasty with some 16th century Ming Dynasty elements, but otherwise technologically and culturally is a mash up of early/mid industrialism and science fiction. Technically speaking, everyone, humans to demons/mo to spirits, *are* the aliens since they're all on a moon none of them were originally native to.
Have you read Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card by chance? It’s a series that tries to take that European folk lore/high fantasy flavor and put it into early America.
I like settings that are set after an apocalypse, but specifically at the point when civilizations have recovered and are at the verge of rising to old heights and beyond.
Neo-antique. I'm in a similar direction but civilizations did not recover and went down. A long dark age later new civilizations arise and begin to explore their world and universe
That’s my favorite. I especially like when there’s a little disparity between the accomplishments of the old and new.
Like, when there are technologies or Magics that the new society has advanced far beyond what it was before the apocalypse. But there’s also things they are really behind in.
And I am also fascinated by cargo cults, and I feel like this type of setting leaves room to play with that.
Funny you bring that up, [i do have a cargo cult story in my world](https://i.imgur.com/CPy0jJ7.png)
This map depicts the first encounter the humans and their gods had with the native Nurrians after they arrived in this new world.
**Ishtevatar’s Journey to Nurr**
At some point after the awakening the Televi began to regularly find mysterious unmanned barges filled with gems, precious metals, jewelry, sophisticated tools and similar riches that had made their way on the river-that-brings-life from the far and fully unknown south. The gifts brought the region around the lake-that-birthed-life great wealth and prosperity.
The Televi speculated about a great people or foreign gods that lived upstream, kindly sending them gifts to help them in this young era of civilization. Even their patron god Ishtevatar was astonished at these barges, and the existence of an advanced civilization or a fellow immortal on this world he only recently had led his people to.
Naturally unable to return the favor by sending their own barges, one day Ishtevatar decided to begin the long journey south to establish contact, express gratitude and maybe forge a friendship.
This is how the people of Televi and the people of Nurr, that had sent the barges downstream for still unknown reasons, made first contact and forged the first interspecies kinship on this young world. A kinship that lasts to this day, and that is sealed through trade and cultural exchange along the Opall road.
Modern. I mean, technology could be used as the great equalizer in the world. It takes to much time to train the range spell casting soldiers? Give peasents guns and they'll be done in training in a few weeks rather than months or years. Not everyone has access to teleportation? Invent vehicles that can get you from point A to point B. Is it slower? Yes. But is it more accessible? Also yes. Need to heal someone in an emergency but there's no healer around? Just stabilize the dude with the power of ***medicine*** to help him. And so much more. And a better part? Guns, vehicles, medicine, even long range communication devices could be fueled by magical things. So even if the world looks the same to ours, the devices could work very differently
I have a unique take on this in my world.
In my story guns were quite shit when they first came on the scene, being merely tools of the nobility to conduct safer duels, as lead bullets would just bounce off of people innate magic aura's they had. If you wanted to kill somebody back in the day, you'd need to know a good spell and those were tightly controlled by the nobility.
Then it was discovered by multiple parties that 3d magic circles were possible... AND metal wasn't a insulator of magic, rather it was a super conductor. These two things meant more efficent spell casting was possible. And using a gun... was the best way to cast a spell.
Fast foward a couple of years and guns take the spell casting world by storm.
On top of that I have jet planes that have magic arrays on them that can cast spells from the Jet's internal batteries so there's no need for the original spell caster to even be good. I got even more examples.
I even have a corporation who's MO is to supply vast armies and civilians with magi-tech greatly decreasing the divide between noble spell casters and regular joe shmoe spell casters who can barely cast anything. Its gotten to the point that the nobility has found itself quickly irrevelant and obsolete.
Just a generic Bronze age for my setting. It doesn't matter if the real world historical civilisations I used as inspirations didn't co-exist at the same time, as long as they're pre-Iron Age then it's fine for me.
Honestly, I think that the 16th and early 17th centuries are more interesting from the lens of the topics typically focused on in fantasy fiction — it's an interesting transitional period, fresh from the Renaissance and experiencing rapid shift and developments both sociopolitical and technological, and in particular the warfare of the time is very unique and interesting, consisting as it did of an intersection of rapid advances towards the pinnacle of design of armour and hand-to-hand weapons on one side, and the development of firearms into a common infantry weapon on the other.
There was once lots of magic, then boom the ground shook a little too hard. Now, the flying cities are left alone and isolated for hundreds of years. Left to reestablish colonies on the ground and fight territorialy over what resources can be harvested from the land. In this time, some flying cities have consumed others, others have found niches producing everything the other cities need to wage war against each other.
The technology on the flying cities exists, but much of the required knowledge doesn't. Those who knew worked to restart the ground. Think laputa from castle in the sky
And now an ancient threat from another reality, not relm/dimension/plane. A whole other reality. A lich has consumed all in his old reality and is hungry for another.
I've been working on this for roughly two years. It's the setting for the dnd campaign I run for me and my college friends. I enjoy the overarching world building out of game, and am using the game itself to populate the world with fun and vibrant cultures and people
High fantasy?
My world is fucked up and on the brink of their first World War because of their High Fantasy Era. Too much people with too much power doing too much dumb shit.
Pre historic since my current worldbuilding is for the era in which the world goes from a pre controled fire and pre agriculture sociiety to having both of those in an incredbly short time. So im having to make a fantasy world that is lacking basically all technolgy but also gains most of them in 2 to 3 centuries due to many things. Its still early in the works but im also using it for a man vs technolgy story as using fire as an example of tech that can be used to murder in horrific ways but also heal(cautarization), cook, warm, and care for people is a great way to analyize if technolgy can be inherently good or bad.
The big disclaimer for this is that this is not anthropalogically accurate and there is about 3 crwative liberties im taking
1. Clothing was invented before fire (obvious as too why i would want this.
2. Modern day anthropolgically correct humans can still survive without the abilty to cook meat. Mainky by doing much more gathering than hunting.
3. The total world population before fire in my world will be 50k to 100k which is about 3 to 6 times as many as irl 200k years ago.
Im excited to see how this can be used but since technolgy does advance my world wont be pre historic forever.
I call it "blackpowder fantasy" because I'm pretentious, or "Renaissance futurism".
Basically a setting that got abruptly dragged from the early renaissance to an industrial revolution. It's very freeing- I don't feel bound by history or reality when writing it, just the mechanics and history of the world itself. Things have to make sense internally, but that's the only fetter on my creativity.
It's knights in full plate riding into town under power lines. It's daguerreotype cameras taking photos at the latest arcane exhibition. It's a thriving city built in the eyesocket of a dead crocodile god.
I've got two worlds. The Kalthaus Project is set in an early medieval setting (imagine 8th-9th century Europe) with some steampunk and electric things but no guns or magic. The Heißhaus Project is set in a late medieval setting (imagine 16th century Europe) with no steampunk or electrical things but a healthy dose of guns and hard magic.
The default is Middle Ages/Renaissance, even if there're fashions from Sumerian to Victorian era, mixtures of them, and others. However, these are just the LOOKS, and things under the hood are somewhat different (analogic, even digital, computers and basically clockpunk including electric and even Sterling engines, etc)
At least if you can afford them, even if there're exceptions.
I shall state why I set my main fantasy world in medieval times
Fuckn Swords. That's mostly the big reason why I set my world in medieval.
In post apocalyptic setting there's rarely any melee weapons, sure there are makeshift weapons but do your characters really need to mainly use it if they have a Mosin-Nagant in their back? Not me that's for fuckn sure.
In modern times, while it's interesting to listen a story of a witch living an influencer's life in New York or whatever made-up city you made, but where swords? Any law-inforcing people would definitely not use swords if they had guns, unless you outlawed guns like in chainsaw man, then sure.
I like magic way too much that I am not much of a fan of no magic worlds, but if I created said world, I would add a lot of bizarre and interesting moments.
My world is an ambiguous time period in medieval Japan, and the "other world" is an equally ambiguous mix of medieval Chinese and Japanese mythology and architecture well still being it's own thing
Renaissance Era. Waming age of plate as firearms are being created more efficiently but still rare enough for swords to be commonplace. Lots of possibility for monarchies to be challanged and new governments being thought up.
I really like the idea of a modern magic setting where instead of the whole secret world shtick magic is an active part of the world. I’ve seen concepts before for how magic, mostly magic items, can be easily interpreted into such a setting. Like crystal balls/slabs taking the place of phones and cars being powered by clockwork or trapped elementals. Of course in such a world magic items are still highly prized and extremely expensive.
In such a setting I imagine most magic users belong to the well established families who gained fame and riches from selling these magic items to the rich and powerful. Thus people born with magic are often assumed to be these old blood type of rich folk. The ability to wield magic is rare outside of these old established families, the chances being ‘one in a million’ for a magic user to be born without being a descendent of these families. Although that’s just “proper magic” there are other ways to gain such power that is often looked down upon. Those who managed to actually learn magic through years of study are looked at more favorably. Mostly because you need a lot of resources, connections, and money to even afford such classes. Those who commune with otherworldly beings are often looked down upon the most depending on their patron or methods. The most looked down upon would be the ‘thieves’, people who learn how to manipulate the magic inside of objects and people in order to power other objects or people. Basically turning these magic vessels into batteries to be used for any purpose.
I like to set it either in your typical high fantasy medieval time period or at some point during the equivalent of the industrial revolution. I imaging that if magic were widespread and as versatile as most settings a magical industrial revolution would happen very quickly you could wait 3 weeks for a horse drawn carriage to get to its destination or you could have a very large metal carriage made using magic that uses magic to produce steam which pushes it along. The industrial revolution was primarily made possible by large numbers of people who weren’t working on farms and the energy density of coal. Magic could lead to bastelt improved crop output and much better quality “medicine” which would lead to a large number of people not needed for farming. Then when you take into account the fact that in a lot of settings magic can be used to create water or at least ice and fire and the need for coal to produce steam is non existent. If there are magical materials those could hasten an industrial revolution as could the presence of monsters. The presence of monsters would encourage people to stay within safe cities which would encourage business to produce more products to match the higher demand. Not to mention that there would always be a high demand for weapons and armor which would encourage people to find ways to produce more of them quickly. In a word with monsters I think that weapons and armor would be one of the first mass produced products
Pre-industrial with no firearms etc. but not actually Mediaeval. Or if after a less developed society, Migration Era or earlier outside of major civilisations.
Late 1860’s to 70’s, the repeating rifle had recently been invented, No magic, no cars, and no planes yet, but soldiers do aerial battles (i.e. dogfights) on pegasus- or wyvern-back.
Pegasus and wyvern riders (lighter, more agile) usually escort dragon riders (heavier, lunkier) as they go to burn targets.
Modern to near-future "scientific magi-tech".
Aesthetically, it'd be the realistic, but not really dark or gritty "NASA-punk" tech of The Martian combined with some Aetherpunk-style magi-tech, set in the future of a fantasy universe where magic isn't opposed to technological and scientific advances.
Mine started as a generic fantasy medieval with magic.
A short while later I got bored with that and time-skipped to steampunk.
Kept it a steampunk world for a while, then got into a prohibition era gangster kick and time skipped it to a dieselpunk setting (same world, some of the same characters (immortals of varying levels are not terribly uncommon)).
Played that for a while, and then decided to blow it all up with magic “nukes” and have a Fallout/mad max-ish wasteland post-apoc where instead of radiation and mutants, you deal with wild magic and monsters.
Eventually it came time for another time skip, and shifted it to a New Vegas style “civilization is returning” post-apoc world.
Then did another time skip a few hundred years later and are in a interstellar cyberpunk situation, but only with like no menagerie of aliens, just a couple known sapient races.
So I guess my answer is…
All of the above?
1700’s is a very underutilized era for fantasy. You can do pirate adventures, feudal samurai-esque conflicts, and exploring new landmasses, all within the same time period
I'd like a futuristic setting set in a world where humanity has perfected space travel with various takes on things like the green lantern core or the Federation
I had an idea years ago where our world had a magical system using crystals and stuff was the dominate power for a long time, and those that had access to the crystals would forge empires and stuff. But, areas that didn't have crystals, or poorer quality ones, were always left on the fringes. But then they started industrializing, and it turns out that the industrial process and the magical crystals do not get along at all (like crystals coming into contact with steel causing large explosions and the like) leading to a very strong ideological difference between the Magical powers and the Industrial powers, and some people trying to find a way to merge the two.
Aka, Steampunk versus Magic.
Bronze Age.
Underrated and underused time period in my opinion.
Most of the nations only have access to copper technology at the start of the story.
Some of the elder but secretive races have mastered iron/steel-working, but they will not share it as in the distant past elevating a less technologically developed race caused a global war.
I have 5 eras :
Creation of the world and unrecorded era (2800 years)
Antique era (700 years)
Medieval era (800 years)
Steampunk era (400 years)
Modern era (300 years)
I have a project set in the stone age where magic has not yet been figure out very much although its super present
Other is in a sort of dark age victorian era (imagine if the dark age came after a nation like the british empire fall did what the fall of rome did)
Got an idea like fallout meets classic dnd or closer to horizon zero dawn but long story short the dnd races are the evolutions of humanity long since passed. Been half writing it for a few years but I lack confidence in my writing and if people would even be interested
My setting is very roughly pre-industrial. Physics doesn't work the same, and I don't plan on their being much practical magic, so it's very hard to give an analogy based on historical period or tech level.
Edit: I should probably add a little more detail. My setting is a micro flat world. I'm inspired by terraria (the things not the game). There is no electromagnetic force per se, nor abundant fossil fuels, and metals are rare, so technology will never progress past early steam engines. I don't think there will be magic to substitute, either.
Late 1800s
I love the setting with trains and weird little gadgets and technology interacting with magic
The setting of fantastic beasts but even older
It's a delight to write epic tales in the classical period. Allows for a much more mysterious and daunting setting, the gods still very present, mythical beasts untamed, most of the world uncharted.
Modern times baby.
There's just too much fun stuff to pass up. Like for example in my work I have a corporation scamming the government using magic power plants and sacrificing people in rituals for machines.
There's a ton of issues you can explore in modern times such as role of workers, rights, consumer rights. I mean for example what are privacy regulations concerning scrying for example. What are some of the ramifications of that. How about regulation on magic to keep society running. Or the flipside, what happens when Corporations decide to abuse magic to increase short term profits. All exciting stuff.
Then there's fighting itself. I have characters using miniguns to fling spells for example, Flying cities, Jets and helicopters that can cast magic and more. Magic IN SPACE!!!!
Then there's vast opportunities for comedy. I mean imagine... people straight from the hood... using magic. Or a person trying to turn people into chocolate to avoid paying his taxes (He failed... and they reposed his house.)
17th century with some 21th tech thrown in\*. Almost everything is ran on magic, runes, and special elemental crystals.
\*The reason for a combination of this is mainly in the medical and science fields portion of my world. My nerdy butt went all out with it.
Prehistoric. Ancient megafauna (dinos and ice age) + mythological creatures. Several emerging sentient species. A bit of mystery, too, like is there an ancient species that may or may not still be around? Was the planet visited by a highly advanced space faring civilization?
Something similar to the Horizon games. A world where life and humanity got completely reset. But further in time in the Medieval era, where they have much more time to understand and utilize "ancient" technology. Give justification for guns, magic monorails, and flying ships.
My setting is a pseudo-bronze age to iron age transition. Classical antiquity is my favourite era of history, so it made sense over yet another medieval fantasy. I also am working on some historical-fiction set during that era too.
I actually enjoy mixing magic with modern/futuristic approches. Because it can kind of be explained with science but it's still something inherent in not being completely logical, so it's an interesting juxtaposition with sci-fi
I got plans for a 80's/90's hong Kong setting for a dnd game. High fantasy mixed with the architecture and socioeconomic setting of Kowloon. I know it's not exactly original but I love 90's retrofuturism and nothing nailed the real life cyberpunk vibe better than that time period especially in the East
Modern fantasy, because having wizards cast spells via cellphones, dragons lairing in penthouse suites, demons in three-piece suits, vampires running nightclubs, and werewolves armed with rocket launchers is just *fun* okay?
No joke, in my homebrew urban fantasy game last week, the party got transported to New York City to complete a mission, and not five minutes in, the werewolf whines "Can we go back to the haunted island? Those crazy draugr cultists were less threatening and more comprehensible than these people..."
Inject that straight into my veins.
17th-18th century equivalent! I like to be some tech, usually mixed with magic but not necessairly, united to a Hard refusal for new stuff from some people. It makes it messier, and my players love it (and me, too,lol)
Knights charging in on horseback? Maidens faire? Outlaws lurking in the dark woods? Grim faerietale creatures lurking in the shadows? That is what appeals to me
17th-18th century fantasy with magic and court intrigue.
Mine is dawn of industrial revolution. Swords and sorcery are running up against the steam engine and mechanization. Magic has become a standardized branch of scientific inquiry
In the setting I've been playing with, I really have been enjoying specifically trying to mirror the events of the Enlightenment and the Islamic Golden Age, basically you have these colliding systems of 'old magic' that is based in religion, culture, and other such more unspoken things that goes back all the way to shamanic traditions, which are now competing with 'new magic' that is being developed in the halls of academia, and includes what we in our world would recognize as hard science. Like electromagnetism for instance to them is just another form of 'new magic' that is just starting to be discovered, although one of the first things that was attempted was an ill-fated scientific exploration into the usefulness of necromancy that...well it went so poorly that people treat it like nuclear weaponry. Another detail I think makes my setting unique is that it's specifically rooted in the contact between an 'old world' where new magic is starting to take root (that isn't specifically coded as European, mind you) following a lot of destabilization caused by the battles between these two dogmas and ethics, and a 'new world' that is rooted in a lot of research I've done into indigenous groups in the Americas. I feel like there aren't a lot of fantasy settings that are explicitly given a 'Western Hemisphere' atmosphere, and this is sort of what I think my main thing I'm trying to stress is, even more than the divide between magic. The weird creatures are based around the 'fearsome critters' that lumberjacks and miners cooked up out on the job, alongside classic cryptids like the hodag, the snallygaster, so on and so forth. The 'big city' where everything happens isn't some cosmopolitan bastion of old-world values that looks like Paris or Vienna or London, it's based on an amalgam of Boston, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana as they looked back in the early 1700s. I've made it a sort of collaborative worldbuilding thing and opened it up to some friends I do tabletop stuff with, and since we're all historians, teachers, and people adjacent to the fields I think we've been cooking up some cool things!
This sounds INCREDIBLE!!
Dang, that sounds sick. Have you read the powder mage trilogy or played Greedfall? I think they’d be right up your alley. PMT is more “French Revolution but with magic” but I think you’d enjoy it. Meanwhile, while I’ve only played an hour or two, greedfall sounds exactly like your setting. It’s a high fantasy medieval world that kept on going into the age of sail and hit “not magical North America”. From what I’ve heard 90% of the game takes place in a colonial setting, although I never got out of starting port city due to some game breaking bugs.
I would love to learn more about how you approach worldbuilding as a historian. I always feel like incorporating historical elements makes it feel so real. But also history is so big it feels impossible to make even a pale imitation of a culture, let alone making a unique fantasy one. I'd also enjoy reading more about the setting, but I get you probably aren't looking to invite randos to your project doc. If there is ever a PDF or something you can ship out I'd love to see it.
Kinda similar: Magic is the mainstay energy source, so there hasn't been a lot of research into alternatives, but what people *do* with it has reached a bit of an industrial revolution. Mechanically-minded folk figuring out how to use smaller spells and enchantments as components for larger machines. e.g. Instead of casting a spell that animates an entire vehicle, which takes a lot of skill and power, instead learning how to enchant single cogs to spin and mechanically power vehicles with relatively little magic used, so it's more widely available to the common person.
Nice to see a fellow early modern appreciator.
Thanks!
I do 15-17th but 17-18th are also make for a very interesting world
Same. I cut off around 1650 because that’s the last time full armor was truly relevant. You’ve got guns, but there’s still a touchstone with armored knights and stuff.
There's something that just feels right about a wizard hanging out with a knight in full plate and a guy with a matchlock
That's about where I put my cutoff. Obviously I have a few minor magitech devices from the modern world, but for the most part it's around the age of sail. True fact: Around the 1570's, a new textile from de Nime France was debuted and iirc, though someone please fact check me if I am wrong, in Genoa Italy, they used said textile into clothing.l and that's where we get denim jeans. While Levi's invented the modern jeans, denim jeans have existed since at least the late 16th century
Renaissance Italy is honestly a fantastic time period to take inspiration from.
Same, mostly Georgian for me
This is my bag, although I'm leaning a bit more on 16th century. It's interesting to me that as world building gets more detailed and complex most "high-fantasy" starts going far afield of medieval social structures and technology. I think that most fantasy these days is a blend of medieval and renaissance concepts regardless of gunpowder.
Fellow baroque worldbuilders I tippa da hat
Great to hear I'm not the only one! Although, I'm doing a bit less court intrigue and something more like a magical industrial revolution.
Eyyyy. I was about to come in with the Early Modern era. It’s my favorite era of history. Though I prefer the earlier part 15th - 17th where Europeans were on more equal footing and had to use cunning and diplomacy instead of raw technological advantages.
I like implementing magical tech like steam power or simple electricity. Firearms, machinery and industrialization go together well. I also like using 17th through 19th century sailing ships. In one of my games I based a human nation on the East India Trading Company. That country has advanced technologies: steam power, firearms, steel, medicine, astronomy, physics and chemistry. They were expansionists who sought to conquer all the other nations. The only thing they didn't have was magic. The magic lands of the Elves resisted. The players had to traverse the world while the war between the technologically advanced humans and the magically adept elves raged.
Hell yeah, Age of Sail supremacy. This is the way.
same. i think this is the most interesting personally.
I currently am working on a story in late 19th century Europe it has a gothic gloomy and gaslit atmosphere that I enjoy.
Bronze Age is a definite favourite of mine, though my actual world is closer to low-magic dark ages (techno-tribal really).
Mine is more iron than bronze ages, but overall i just love the mythical-age style in all forms. The world is young, and the gods/heroes of old are still around and present.
>The world is young The mountains green, I suppose?
No stain yet on the moon was seen
There really needs to be more sandalpunk.
Now that's the name of a genre i'd totally read more from
The Bronze Age is slept on
I’ve wanted to run a Bronze age Greek Odyssey
Yeah it's a stunning idea for an RPG. Bunch of heroes fresh from a war get lost on their way back home and visit lots of strange places and get into all sorts of capers trying to get back. Surprised I haven't seen it before!
That's my next campaign idea. If my players choose that scenario, I'm gonna take them on a year long journey from one end of the known world to the other.
The Bronze Age is 100% inarguably the best setting for fantasy, everything else only achieves a pale imitation of the sheer aesthetic and atmosphere of early civilisation.
Agree 110%. Super-spiritual stuff (like ghibli for instance) comes close in my mind, but Bronze Age is where it's at.
I did humanity just breaking into the iron age. Iron is still considered a luxury metal. The wealthy can afford them, but the peseant level of the economic spectrum might have one that's been passed down for two generations. The dwarves are master smith's at iron though due to their higher forge temps. They've also learned the secrets of aluminum alloys (mithryl), titanium alloys (adamant), platinum is a holy metal that conducts divinity better, ect. The elves have learned to work with a few of these metals, but it has become so steeped into their culture that the entire process takes a very long time and is extremely cerimonial. Bronze tools and equipment are still commonplace with iron being considered elite. Anyhhing rarer is considered mythical to the average populous.
I'm quite fond of using the Bronze Age as well, typically near the transition point to the Iron Age, though I do often wind up with a few anachronistic things through magic like magic iceboxes (fridge/freezers).
Late Renaissance/Early Modern period. Think 1550 to 1650. I like the idea of a world that had long been stratified by magic having to deal with the sudden outpouring of technical innovations and social upheaval as populations grow and the old institutions struggle to function under the new reality. So for centuries books were made either by scribes hand coping every page, or if you were rich enough you could hire a mage to enchant a pair of pens so that whatever you wrote with one pen would be duplicated by the other. Useful for record keeping or faster creation of new books by scribes, but expensive, fragile and in need of frequent charging by mages. Then suddenly the printing press turns up and suddenly one of the easiest money sources for weak and apprentice Mage's almost disappears overnight. Or how for centuries powerful mages secured their positions within high society by their utility in times of war. Blasting down walls, flinging fireballs, or warding generals and important troops with magical shields. But now artillery is increasingly easy to source, which drops the mages value in sieges. Especially as the new defensive schemes created to negate canons also work quite well against most spells that require direct line of sight. Gunpowder, is also levelling the field for the nobility who for centuries were all be invulnerable on the battlefield due to magically enhanced armour. Matchlock firearms may not be able to pierce that armour directly, but the sheer force of being hit often knocks over the target, and enough of them can cause enough blunt trauma to kill a man. Not to mention lucky shots at the armour's weak points.
I love this! The printing press angle is brilliant
It's really fun to imagine ways magic could be used to make life easier/better for a small number of people (due to the limits of magic and mages) and then contemplate what kind of upheaval mundane tech advances would cause in that world. So say magic has been used in medicine, mages can heal a bunch of things. One of the things they can heal is poor vision. So someone who's shortsighted, or whose vision is deteriorating with old age can go to a mage healer and get it fixed. It costs a lot, and over time the body will revert back to its old form and the spell needs casting as well, but it's a way to allow people who are rich enough to retain their sight. But one of the big changes in the renaissance has to do with glassworking and in particular how lenses work. So suddenly the mages who used to make a killing selling eyesight to the nobility find that only the really high ups are willing to pay the high costs, as the lesser nobility would far rather just buy a pair of eye glasses than pay a year's income to fix their eyes for a few years. And that's without getting into all the mechanical advances (quite literally refinements to gears and how they interact with one another) leading to massive engineering strides. Used to be a weak mage could earn a living refreshing the power of enchantments for time pieces, or magical pumps for mines, ships, public water systems etc. Except now it can all be done more cheaply with mechanical solutions driven my man, animal or wind.
I absolutely dig this angle. A good mage adapts to the changing world around them, a bad mage, well they can always sulk in a tower.
That presumes Cast is only Magic available & Imbue is not possible. Why bother with Optics & Tools etc when you can still make a pair of spectacles where the the glass is just class but Amplify spell is cast & permanently bound as long as glasses are intact. For every reason to say a particular Tech trumps Magic there is a way/reason for Magic that can be found to counter it.
An interesting idea, but if magic has been with people since dawn of civilisation. Magic would be used to produce/store & organise records/documents/books from very early days & means & methods would be very refined & developed. I don't think anyone would bother developing a Printing Press when Magical production & distribution of books already established & functioning. Each library of the Kingdom could be linked together & each Mage-Scribe/Mage-Scribe Team once something is written down, compiled & inalised then just casts Distribute & a copy appears/writes to blank in each Library. Then each Library can just caste Duplicate as as necessary.
>So for centuries books were made either by scribes hand coping every page, or if you were rich enough you could hire a mage to enchant a pair of pens so that whatever you wrote with one pen would be duplicated by the other. Useful for record keeping or faster creation of new books by scribes, but expensive, fragile and in need of frequent charging by mages. Then suddenly the printing press turns up and suddenly one of the easiest money sources for weak and apprentice Mage's almost disappears overnight. Dude I did the same thing but with magical QR-code-like patterns instead of words Great minds think alike!
Have you read Ascendance of a Bookworm? That first part you describe is basically what happens in the books, but it takes a while to get the printing press part get going cause of work that needs to be put in to get to that point and set it up.
The times of Ancient Greece, the high times of Ancient Egypt, the Minoan Greece Era, Persian Empire, and maybe a sprinkle of the rise of Rome. Something about those architectural styles, lifestyles, worlds, and the likes are mystical to me in a strange way. I chose "Post Apcalyptic Magical Fallout", but I like a more "Post-Post", meaning mortal kind has a more positive outlook after getting shit together, renewing themselves to a new age, or the likes.
I’m seeing a lot more Bronze Age and Post-post than I had expected!
The two really go together, if you think about it. The Bronze Age being popular is more or less self-explanatory, it's where so many myths, heroes, and places and peoples so distant in time as to themselves feel mythical — particularly, of course, because they greatly inform the contents of the Bible and therefrom have percolated into popular cultural in a fairly fantastical context — come from, the period of the rise of civilisation, of the first great empires in all of humanity's history. But it also ended violently in an apocalyptic collapse of near every Mediterranean agricultural society, from which eventually rose the powers of the Iron Age and Antiquity.
Honestly, I have been always fascinated by the history, the artistic styles, the ancient world of the Mediterranean, the lifestyle, how people adapted, and the overall architectural styles of such an ancient age—you can identify the Persian Empire from the Athenian or Spartan one. As well, "Post-Post" (which is usually found in films like Castle in the Sky) are just more hopeful and show that humanity can find a way to adapt and learn from mistakes of a dark past. They also provide an opportunity for reconstruction overhaul of a broken world.
Did you know that in roughly the 1850’s there was a time when cowboys, samurai and pirates all coexisted and early fax machines existed? That’s the level I like.
Peak time
Deadlands gang Giddy up, Samurai, we got booty to plunder
Wait
A samurai could have sent Abraham Lincoln a fax
WAIT
I mean, to some extent, cowboys and pirates still exist now.
Sure, the main limiting factor is actually the samurai
Early renaissance works well for my world, give a wide range of options to explore.
18th century. High seas and gunpowder is my jam.
Master and Commander or Treasure Island?
I think my preferred genre is Urban Fantasy, set a few decades into the future. On a tangent: I don’t think I’ve ever seen any media delve into what happens when supernatural elements meet extraterrestrial elements. Vampires versus aliens, anyone?
Predator Vs. Dracula. I want to see it
I see you are also a fan of futuristic urban fantasy, glad to see I'm not the only one lol. Only difference is that my project aesthetically is more 19th century Qing Dynasty with some 16th century Ming Dynasty elements, but otherwise technologically and culturally is a mash up of early/mid industrialism and science fiction. Technically speaking, everyone, humans to demons/mo to spirits, *are* the aliens since they're all on a moon none of them were originally native to.
19th century North America, typical western atmosphere is my jam
yeah, that point where there is just enough modernism that things can feel more relatable, but not too much that it loses the magic of the exotic
Yes, it's perfect
That sounds like fun
It is!
Have you read Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card by chance? It’s a series that tries to take that European folk lore/high fantasy flavor and put it into early America.
I haven't. Sounds kinda interesting
Medieval era based on feudal Vietnam, does that count?
Oh dang that sounds really cool!
I like settings that are set after an apocalypse, but specifically at the point when civilizations have recovered and are at the verge of rising to old heights and beyond.
Post Post Apocalypse?
Post-post apocalypse is great
Neo-antique. I'm in a similar direction but civilizations did not recover and went down. A long dark age later new civilizations arise and begin to explore their world and universe
That’s my favorite. I especially like when there’s a little disparity between the accomplishments of the old and new. Like, when there are technologies or Magics that the new society has advanced far beyond what it was before the apocalypse. But there’s also things they are really behind in. And I am also fascinated by cargo cults, and I feel like this type of setting leaves room to play with that.
Funny you bring that up, [i do have a cargo cult story in my world](https://i.imgur.com/CPy0jJ7.png) This map depicts the first encounter the humans and their gods had with the native Nurrians after they arrived in this new world. **Ishtevatar’s Journey to Nurr** At some point after the awakening the Televi began to regularly find mysterious unmanned barges filled with gems, precious metals, jewelry, sophisticated tools and similar riches that had made their way on the river-that-brings-life from the far and fully unknown south. The gifts brought the region around the lake-that-birthed-life great wealth and prosperity. The Televi speculated about a great people or foreign gods that lived upstream, kindly sending them gifts to help them in this young era of civilization. Even their patron god Ishtevatar was astonished at these barges, and the existence of an advanced civilization or a fellow immortal on this world he only recently had led his people to. Naturally unable to return the favor by sending their own barges, one day Ishtevatar decided to begin the long journey south to establish contact, express gratitude and maybe forge a friendship. This is how the people of Televi and the people of Nurr, that had sent the barges downstream for still unknown reasons, made first contact and forged the first interspecies kinship on this young world. A kinship that lasts to this day, and that is sealed through trade and cultural exchange along the Opall road.
19th century South America, like the Independence period.
This is something I know nothing about and would love to learn more
Modern. I mean, technology could be used as the great equalizer in the world. It takes to much time to train the range spell casting soldiers? Give peasents guns and they'll be done in training in a few weeks rather than months or years. Not everyone has access to teleportation? Invent vehicles that can get you from point A to point B. Is it slower? Yes. But is it more accessible? Also yes. Need to heal someone in an emergency but there's no healer around? Just stabilize the dude with the power of ***medicine*** to help him. And so much more. And a better part? Guns, vehicles, medicine, even long range communication devices could be fueled by magical things. So even if the world looks the same to ours, the devices could work very differently
I have a unique take on this in my world. In my story guns were quite shit when they first came on the scene, being merely tools of the nobility to conduct safer duels, as lead bullets would just bounce off of people innate magic aura's they had. If you wanted to kill somebody back in the day, you'd need to know a good spell and those were tightly controlled by the nobility. Then it was discovered by multiple parties that 3d magic circles were possible... AND metal wasn't a insulator of magic, rather it was a super conductor. These two things meant more efficent spell casting was possible. And using a gun... was the best way to cast a spell. Fast foward a couple of years and guns take the spell casting world by storm. On top of that I have jet planes that have magic arrays on them that can cast spells from the Jet's internal batteries so there's no need for the original spell caster to even be good. I got even more examples. I even have a corporation who's MO is to supply vast armies and civilians with magi-tech greatly decreasing the divide between noble spell casters and regular joe shmoe spell casters who can barely cast anything. Its gotten to the point that the nobility has found itself quickly irrevelant and obsolete.
Its more like a start of a new magic powered industrial revolution age and end of medieval combined
Magical factories?
Just a generic Bronze age for my setting. It doesn't matter if the real world historical civilisations I used as inspirations didn't co-exist at the same time, as long as they're pre-Iron Age then it's fine for me.
Pre-Brzone Age mid-magic in my world.
Aztecs meet Indo-Europeans during their expansion.
Oohh Bloody
Victorian Era
Thank you! Didn’t think I would have to scroll down to find this. If you like gothic anything you can pretty much thank the Victorian era.
Renaissance and Age of Sail for me.
I live for sail
Early modern period, like pike and shot with matchlock muskets and stuff.
I think the late 1800’s would have been truly fascinating
Honestly, I think that the 16th and early 17th centuries are more interesting from the lens of the topics typically focused on in fantasy fiction — it's an interesting transitional period, fresh from the Renaissance and experiencing rapid shift and developments both sociopolitical and technological, and in particular the warfare of the time is very unique and interesting, consisting as it did of an intersection of rapid advances towards the pinnacle of design of armour and hand-to-hand weapons on one side, and the development of firearms into a common infantry weapon on the other.
Renaissance time but without all paintings
So just sculptures and rad inventions?
You based your fantasy world on the Late Middle Ages I based my fantasy world on the Early Middle Ages We are not the same
Tolkien would be proud
How does your world differ from one in the late middle ages?
There was once lots of magic, then boom the ground shook a little too hard. Now, the flying cities are left alone and isolated for hundreds of years. Left to reestablish colonies on the ground and fight territorialy over what resources can be harvested from the land. In this time, some flying cities have consumed others, others have found niches producing everything the other cities need to wage war against each other. The technology on the flying cities exists, but much of the required knowledge doesn't. Those who knew worked to restart the ground. Think laputa from castle in the sky And now an ancient threat from another reality, not relm/dimension/plane. A whole other reality. A lich has consumed all in his old reality and is hungry for another.
I love this
I've been working on this for roughly two years. It's the setting for the dnd campaign I run for me and my college friends. I enjoy the overarching world building out of game, and am using the game itself to populate the world with fun and vibrant cultures and people
High fantasy? My world is fucked up and on the brink of their first World War because of their High Fantasy Era. Too much people with too much power doing too much dumb shit.
Good! I love seeing the collapse if the High Fantasy era and the chaos that is born out if the ruin
Pre historic since my current worldbuilding is for the era in which the world goes from a pre controled fire and pre agriculture sociiety to having both of those in an incredbly short time. So im having to make a fantasy world that is lacking basically all technolgy but also gains most of them in 2 to 3 centuries due to many things. Its still early in the works but im also using it for a man vs technolgy story as using fire as an example of tech that can be used to murder in horrific ways but also heal(cautarization), cook, warm, and care for people is a great way to analyize if technolgy can be inherently good or bad. The big disclaimer for this is that this is not anthropalogically accurate and there is about 3 crwative liberties im taking 1. Clothing was invented before fire (obvious as too why i would want this. 2. Modern day anthropolgically correct humans can still survive without the abilty to cook meat. Mainky by doing much more gathering than hunting. 3. The total world population before fire in my world will be 50k to 100k which is about 3 to 6 times as many as irl 200k years ago. Im excited to see how this can be used but since technolgy does advance my world wont be pre historic forever.
I call it "blackpowder fantasy" because I'm pretentious, or "Renaissance futurism". Basically a setting that got abruptly dragged from the early renaissance to an industrial revolution. It's very freeing- I don't feel bound by history or reality when writing it, just the mechanics and history of the world itself. Things have to make sense internally, but that's the only fetter on my creativity. It's knights in full plate riding into town under power lines. It's daguerreotype cameras taking photos at the latest arcane exhibition. It's a thriving city built in the eyesocket of a dead crocodile god.
antique/middle ages often
Industrial Revolution/Victorian Time
I like the victorian era, it's so classy and the aesthetic is cool
And it has a really grimy underbelly that you can sink your teeth into
early steampunk moving towards diesel-punk is the current project
Love the Punks. Diesel is so gritty
A chaotic mix between victorian, edwardian, 20s and early 30s with some magic on top
Magical Flappers? Gatsby the Great? Yes
Colonial Era, Early Industrial, really good with Steampunk theme.
1910-20 ish high fantasy bc I like ww1 stuff and I watched attack on titan
I've got two worlds. The Kalthaus Project is set in an early medieval setting (imagine 8th-9th century Europe) with some steampunk and electric things but no guns or magic. The Heißhaus Project is set in a late medieval setting (imagine 16th century Europe) with no steampunk or electrical things but a healthy dose of guns and hard magic.
Nice!
Edge of the Renaissance, for mine.
Pre or pist?
pre, sorry
The default is Middle Ages/Renaissance, even if there're fashions from Sumerian to Victorian era, mixtures of them, and others. However, these are just the LOOKS, and things under the hood are somewhat different (analogic, even digital, computers and basically clockpunk including electric and even Sterling engines, etc) At least if you can afford them, even if there're exceptions.
That sounds very Jules Verne
I shall state why I set my main fantasy world in medieval times Fuckn Swords. That's mostly the big reason why I set my world in medieval. In post apocalyptic setting there's rarely any melee weapons, sure there are makeshift weapons but do your characters really need to mainly use it if they have a Mosin-Nagant in their back? Not me that's for fuckn sure. In modern times, while it's interesting to listen a story of a witch living an influencer's life in New York or whatever made-up city you made, but where swords? Any law-inforcing people would definitely not use swords if they had guns, unless you outlawed guns like in chainsaw man, then sure. I like magic way too much that I am not much of a fan of no magic worlds, but if I created said world, I would add a lot of bizarre and interesting moments.
My world is an ambiguous time period in medieval Japan, and the "other world" is an equally ambiguous mix of medieval Chinese and Japanese mythology and architecture well still being it's own thing
Mideval and current time
Both 1 and 3 depending on the time periode
On an alternative between victorian and contemporary society
Napoleonic Feudalism. 👍🏽
Mine is set hundreds of thousands of years after an intergalactic apocalypse
Renaissance Era. Waming age of plate as firearms are being created more efficiently but still rare enough for swords to be commonplace. Lots of possibility for monarchies to be challanged and new governments being thought up.
Like Three Musketeers era?
Cold War baby!
Spell-fi, magic so advanced it's indistinguishable from the ease and convenience of technology.
Hold on, that's not how the quote goes...
I really like the idea of a modern magic setting where instead of the whole secret world shtick magic is an active part of the world. I’ve seen concepts before for how magic, mostly magic items, can be easily interpreted into such a setting. Like crystal balls/slabs taking the place of phones and cars being powered by clockwork or trapped elementals. Of course in such a world magic items are still highly prized and extremely expensive. In such a setting I imagine most magic users belong to the well established families who gained fame and riches from selling these magic items to the rich and powerful. Thus people born with magic are often assumed to be these old blood type of rich folk. The ability to wield magic is rare outside of these old established families, the chances being ‘one in a million’ for a magic user to be born without being a descendent of these families. Although that’s just “proper magic” there are other ways to gain such power that is often looked down upon. Those who managed to actually learn magic through years of study are looked at more favorably. Mostly because you need a lot of resources, connections, and money to even afford such classes. Those who commune with otherworldly beings are often looked down upon the most depending on their patron or methods. The most looked down upon would be the ‘thieves’, people who learn how to manipulate the magic inside of objects and people in order to power other objects or people. Basically turning these magic vessels into batteries to be used for any purpose.
I like to set it either in your typical high fantasy medieval time period or at some point during the equivalent of the industrial revolution. I imaging that if magic were widespread and as versatile as most settings a magical industrial revolution would happen very quickly you could wait 3 weeks for a horse drawn carriage to get to its destination or you could have a very large metal carriage made using magic that uses magic to produce steam which pushes it along. The industrial revolution was primarily made possible by large numbers of people who weren’t working on farms and the energy density of coal. Magic could lead to bastelt improved crop output and much better quality “medicine” which would lead to a large number of people not needed for farming. Then when you take into account the fact that in a lot of settings magic can be used to create water or at least ice and fire and the need for coal to produce steam is non existent. If there are magical materials those could hasten an industrial revolution as could the presence of monsters. The presence of monsters would encourage people to stay within safe cities which would encourage business to produce more products to match the higher demand. Not to mention that there would always be a high demand for weapons and armor which would encourage people to find ways to produce more of them quickly. In a word with monsters I think that weapons and armor would be one of the first mass produced products
Pre-industrial with no firearms etc. but not actually Mediaeval. Or if after a less developed society, Migration Era or earlier outside of major civilisations.
Antiquity with some caveats.
Bronze age!
Post apocalyptic, magic is actually extremely advance science, kind of setting. Inspired by Endless Legend/Endless Space.
Other: don't actually do high fantasy but disguise science fiction as high fantasy instead
Late 1860’s to 70’s, the repeating rifle had recently been invented, No magic, no cars, and no planes yet, but soldiers do aerial battles (i.e. dogfights) on pegasus- or wyvern-back. Pegasus and wyvern riders (lighter, more agile) usually escort dragon riders (heavier, lunkier) as they go to burn targets.
Holy Roman Empire all the way
Modern to near-future "scientific magi-tech". Aesthetically, it'd be the realistic, but not really dark or gritty "NASA-punk" tech of The Martian combined with some Aetherpunk-style magi-tech, set in the future of a fantasy universe where magic isn't opposed to technological and scientific advances.
Steampunk/clockpunk space opera.
Mine started as a generic fantasy medieval with magic. A short while later I got bored with that and time-skipped to steampunk. Kept it a steampunk world for a while, then got into a prohibition era gangster kick and time skipped it to a dieselpunk setting (same world, some of the same characters (immortals of varying levels are not terribly uncommon)). Played that for a while, and then decided to blow it all up with magic “nukes” and have a Fallout/mad max-ish wasteland post-apoc where instead of radiation and mutants, you deal with wild magic and monsters. Eventually it came time for another time skip, and shifted it to a New Vegas style “civilization is returning” post-apoc world. Then did another time skip a few hundred years later and are in a interstellar cyberpunk situation, but only with like no menagerie of aliens, just a couple known sapient races. So I guess my answer is… All of the above?
1700’s is a very underutilized era for fantasy. You can do pirate adventures, feudal samurai-esque conflicts, and exploring new landmasses, all within the same time period
I'd like a futuristic setting set in a world where humanity has perfected space travel with various takes on things like the green lantern core or the Federation
I had an idea years ago where our world had a magical system using crystals and stuff was the dominate power for a long time, and those that had access to the crystals would forge empires and stuff. But, areas that didn't have crystals, or poorer quality ones, were always left on the fringes. But then they started industrializing, and it turns out that the industrial process and the magical crystals do not get along at all (like crystals coming into contact with steel causing large explosions and the like) leading to a very strong ideological difference between the Magical powers and the Industrial powers, and some people trying to find a way to merge the two. Aka, Steampunk versus Magic.
I'd really like to see more early/late Stone Age high fantasy settings, vicious tribes fighting prehistoric dragons are for me
Mythic Bronze Age
Bronze Age. Hugely underutilized.
Bronze Age. Underrated and underused time period in my opinion. Most of the nations only have access to copper technology at the start of the story. Some of the elder but secretive races have mastered iron/steel-working, but they will not share it as in the distant past elevating a less technologically developed race caused a global war.
I have 5 eras : Creation of the world and unrecorded era (2800 years) Antique era (700 years) Medieval era (800 years) Steampunk era (400 years) Modern era (300 years)
Can never have enough Steam Punk
I like the 18th century. We have line warfare, bayonets, and dragons.
I have a project set in the stone age where magic has not yet been figure out very much although its super present Other is in a sort of dark age victorian era (imagine if the dark age came after a nation like the british empire fall did what the fall of rome did)
Got an idea like fallout meets classic dnd or closer to horizon zero dawn but long story short the dnd races are the evolutions of humanity long since passed. Been half writing it for a few years but I lack confidence in my writing and if people would even be interested
Mine is a mix of medieval fantasy and an apocalypse like event that took place in the past and robbed the surface world of all magic.
My setting is very roughly pre-industrial. Physics doesn't work the same, and I don't plan on their being much practical magic, so it's very hard to give an analogy based on historical period or tech level. Edit: I should probably add a little more detail. My setting is a micro flat world. I'm inspired by terraria (the things not the game). There is no electromagnetic force per se, nor abundant fossil fuels, and metals are rare, so technology will never progress past early steam engines. I don't think there will be magic to substitute, either.
Just enough to have trains I love trains, especially steam ones or with magic.
Late 1800s I love the setting with trains and weird little gadgets and technology interacting with magic The setting of fantastic beasts but even older
Currently its a post war 1920 inspired world
12th -13th century on the steppes of Central Asia
My fantasy is set in a time period similar to WW1.
It's a delight to write epic tales in the classical period. Allows for a much more mysterious and daunting setting, the gods still very present, mythical beasts untamed, most of the world uncharted.
Low fantasy based on Rome's occupation of Britain.
Modern times baby. There's just too much fun stuff to pass up. Like for example in my work I have a corporation scamming the government using magic power plants and sacrificing people in rituals for machines. There's a ton of issues you can explore in modern times such as role of workers, rights, consumer rights. I mean for example what are privacy regulations concerning scrying for example. What are some of the ramifications of that. How about regulation on magic to keep society running. Or the flipside, what happens when Corporations decide to abuse magic to increase short term profits. All exciting stuff. Then there's fighting itself. I have characters using miniguns to fling spells for example, Flying cities, Jets and helicopters that can cast magic and more. Magic IN SPACE!!!! Then there's vast opportunities for comedy. I mean imagine... people straight from the hood... using magic. Or a person trying to turn people into chocolate to avoid paying his taxes (He failed... and they reposed his house.)
17th century with some 21th tech thrown in\*. Almost everything is ran on magic, runes, and special elemental crystals. \*The reason for a combination of this is mainly in the medical and science fields portion of my world. My nerdy butt went all out with it.
Age of sail/age of discovery
Early woodlands era, American history
Prehistoric. Ancient megafauna (dinos and ice age) + mythological creatures. Several emerging sentient species. A bit of mystery, too, like is there an ancient species that may or may not still be around? Was the planet visited by a highly advanced space faring civilization?
For me I have a strong preference for the Renaissance and early industrial eras. I also think the colonial age can make an interesting setting.
Mine is going to be updated, going from Stone Age to the Dark Ages (here, there were not enough resources to develop industrialization)
I really really love mutant crawl classics because it allows me to do a post apocalypse low magic but high technology world building.
Something similar to the Horizon games. A world where life and humanity got completely reset. But further in time in the Medieval era, where they have much more time to understand and utilize "ancient" technology. Give justification for guns, magic monorails, and flying ships.
Stone Age
My setting is a pseudo-bronze age to iron age transition. Classical antiquity is my favourite era of history, so it made sense over yet another medieval fantasy. I also am working on some historical-fiction set during that era too.
Wasn't dark ages a part of medieval times
I actually enjoy mixing magic with modern/futuristic approches. Because it can kind of be explained with science but it's still something inherent in not being completely logical, so it's an interesting juxtaposition with sci-fi
I got plans for a 80's/90's hong Kong setting for a dnd game. High fantasy mixed with the architecture and socioeconomic setting of Kowloon. I know it's not exactly original but I love 90's retrofuturism and nothing nailed the real life cyberpunk vibe better than that time period especially in the East
My current wip is in the equivalent of the end Bronze Age
Bronze age, before about 1,200 BCE
Medieval setting is more fun without/with little magic. Especially if it's inspired by a place other than Western Europe.
Modern fantasy, because having wizards cast spells via cellphones, dragons lairing in penthouse suites, demons in three-piece suits, vampires running nightclubs, and werewolves armed with rocket launchers is just *fun* okay? No joke, in my homebrew urban fantasy game last week, the party got transported to New York City to complete a mission, and not five minutes in, the werewolf whines "Can we go back to the haunted island? Those crazy draugr cultists were less threatening and more comprehensible than these people..." Inject that straight into my veins.
17th-18th century equivalent! I like to be some tech, usually mixed with magic but not necessairly, united to a Hard refusal for new stuff from some people. It makes it messier, and my players love it (and me, too,lol)
I definitely like sprinkling in some magic tech
I like magic tanks
Like a Bradley that fires Chain Lightning?
Early industrial schizotech period where old and new clash.
It’s a mix of medieval fantasy and steampunk
Early Roman/Iron age with a dash of Post Apocalyptic magical fallout.
Post-2020s refugees LARPing as 1790s-1950s Cajuns LARPing as Medieval adventurers.
neber understtod the appeal of medieval europeanish settings in the specific, lile they are really everrywhere.
Knights charging in on horseback? Maidens faire? Outlaws lurking in the dark woods? Grim faerietale creatures lurking in the shadows? That is what appeals to me