Dream Worlds

[Thorgalaeg]

So, to take a break from so much depressing real world news a thread about imaginary worlds:

For a guy with little imagination like me, I've always found it amazing how some authors can build their own imaginary universes and develop them for years. Clearly, they're very talented guys and/or have a lot of time to spare. Which is your favorite? I've included a poll where you can chose a max of 3 with a few that I consider to have enough depth and lore to be considered "imaginary universes," of course there are many more i forgot or I know absolutely nothing about, please feel free to comment them.

Personally, since I was a kid, my favorite world has been the Hyborian Age of Conan, mainly thanks to the Savage Sword comic books and such (from which I also learned to draw). Later, I discovered other universes that were obviously richer but perhaps lacked the savage element and that kind of amoral freshness of Robert E. Howard, the most obvious example being the almighty universe of Tolkien. Lately, I've discovered the Warhammer 40k universe, which I find extremely fun because of its absurdity and exaggeration, bordering on irony, to the point that only an Englishman could have dreamed it up.


EDIT: Ops, i forgot Dune, adding it...

 

[Fippy]

Out of those i spent the most time in / with Baldurs Gate..
so i had to vote for BG 1&2

 

[Akka]

Is it "which imaginary world is the one you find the most interesting as a background for a game/story", or "which imaginary world is the one you would the most live in" ?

 

[PhroX]

While it's not the one that contains my favourite stories, as a world I'm becoming more and more convinced, having seen more and more other examples, that Middle Earth is the best, as it has a verisimilitude than few if any can match. Tolkien's deep knowledge of the history and societies that he took inspiration from, and his sometimes meticulous detail on seemingly mundane things just makes everything feel more real.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Is it "which imaginary world is the one you find the most interesting as a background for a game/story", or "which imaginary world is the one you would the most live in" ?

The first one i would say, if it were the second question nobody would vote for the Cthulhu Mythos or the world of the Teletubbies.

But the second question is very interesting too. I would chose to live in the Elder Scrolls for the landscapes or Stark Trek bacuse all the day in pajama looks comfy.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

While it's not the one that contains my favourite stories, as a world I'm becoming more and more convinced, having seen more and more other examples, that Middle Earth is the best, as it has a verisimilitude than few if any can match. Tolkien's deep knowledge of the history and societies that he took inspiration from, and his sometimes meticulous detail on seemingly mundane things just makes everything feel more real.

Yep, it is crazy. There other universes with vastly larger amounts of lore, but they are written for multple authors, like Star Wars, Marvel and DC univese, etc threfore lacking consistency or even making not sense at all. For monoauthor universes i think Tolkien is unmatched in its perfection, yet it is not my absolute favorite.

 

[PhroX]

Yep, it is crazy. There other universes with vastly larger amounts of lore, but they are written for multple authors, like Star Wars, Marvel and DC univese, etc threfore lacking consistency or even making not sense at all. For monoauthor universes i think Tolkien is unmatched in its perfection, yet it is not my absolute favorite.

It's not even just the multi-writer settings. For example, I frequently see people call Brandon Sanderson a great worldbuilder. But, while I like him as an author (well, I did like him, his last couple of books have been pretty bad) he's not a patch on Tolkien when it comes to crafting a believable world.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Forgotten Realms is probably my favorite (Baldur’s Gate takes place there). I’ve played basically all the video games, read a ton of books, and done multiple D&D campaigns in that setting. Even as someone who generally prefers sci-fi to fantasy it’s just a really fun playground.

I also have spent a lot of time with The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Warcraft, Star Trek, and Star Wars. In all of those I have done either significant EU reading, roleplaying, and/or Wiki editing, with TES and Star Wars being the next two most engaged in for me after FR.

I like LotR a lot but haven’t done anything besides read the main books & Silmarillion, so my experience there is much more casual. I used to read Marvel and DC comics but the whole movie period has unfortunately soured me on like all superhero stuff, even if that’s a bit unfair on my end.

I like the Witcher games a lot but hated the books and didn’t even finish the first one when I tried. Like the Mass Effect games as well but haven’t read anything or engaged beyond the games.

I tend to think Lovecraft stuff is super overplayed and very uninteresting to me, unless it’s done in an original way like the recent adventure video game The Drifter.

Final Fantasy is tough because each mainline game basically encompasses a different world, even if they go back and expand on some of their most popular ones. I do really, really love the world of FF VII and VIII though. I wish VIII would get the same modern expansion treatment VII has.

I actually prefer fantasy Warhammer to 40k, just because 40k gets a little too over the top for me. But I do like the whole kind of 80s computer vibe in 40k. I appreciate how original Warhammer still maintains some lighthearted humor. Plus it’s very much the progenitor of Warcraft. I wish we got more good Warhammer video games besides just like Vermintide.

There are a few others I would put forward:

The World of Ultima is a cool sort of psuedo earth fantasy setting with a lot to explore. Wizards of the Coast has unabashedly ruined it recently with their “we must bring every single fictional universe to it with exorbitant prices” but for a long time Magic: The Gathering had really cool lore.

Not sure if it really counts but William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy as the OG cyberpunk is really cool.

And speaking of cyberpunk, the other one I would put forward is Cyberpunk 2020, etc. Besides the 2077 game, I have done some RP sessions in that world and briefly played Netrunner. I am a huge sucker for good cyberpunk even if the tropes are deeply overused now. Mike Pondsmith is a cool dude though.

 

[Akka]

The first one i would say, if it were the second question nobody would vote for the Cthulhu Mythos or the world of the Teletubbies.

I think WH40K would be even lower than both.

But the second question is very interesting too. I would chose to live in the Elder Scrolls for the landscapes or Stark Trek bacuse all the day in pajama looks comfy.

So my choices would be :

First of all, in both cases, Middle-Earth. Not only for what Phrox said, but also because it had such a mythological poetry to it. I can sink hours reading Tolkiengateway and Reddit analysis about what Tolkien put into its world and always ends up amazed and dreamy about it. It's not as down-to-Earth immersive and realistic as GoT, certainly (the great wars description tends to be a bit samey and somehow naïve, and everything and everyone tends to be excessively larger-than-life), but it just manages to land the ambiance masterfully, and is always deeper and more thoughtful than it seems, especially when it comes to fundamental principles and ideas that run through the entire serie. It's often been flanderized as something simplistic, while it's anything but. Also, it has the most "magical" magic by being the most low-key and natural about it.
Tolkien is still the Master of it all.

Then I'd say the original Mass Effect galaxy (not the ME3 or later one). It just managed to take Star Trek/Star Wars ideas and make it a much more interesting reconstruction, incredibly grounded and without too much blatant logic hole - accept the concept of the titular mass effect and everything kind of fall into place. The minutiae put into it really make it effortlessly believable. It's also not a bad place to live, minus the Reapers.

As a third choice, real-world Antiquity/Middle-Ages always kick my imagination wild, and there is something fascinating to history.

If I had a fourth choice, it would be WH40K, though obviously and said above, only as a background for a game and not to live here. Its over-the-top bleak and beyond dystopic universe has something both comical and deadly serious that makes it really interesting. It's certainly not high litterature, but the fundamental concept is original and appeal to some visceral teenage vibes.
And a special nod to Discworld, which is not in the poll but should be.

 

[Kyriakos]

WH40K is certainly the most extravagant, but due to being written by hundreds of writers the quality varies widely. Personally I find the Emperor arc to be pure cringe and extremely low literature, but like other elements (such as the hive-city underground levels being infested with alien gene manipulators, or the machine-god worship in Mars).

As for the Cthulhu mythos, it has fallen victim to a similar effect due to so many other writers using it. But it was more confined in scope - with it being centered on some alien species which had in the distant past arrived on Earth, and its wars with the slave cast it created artificially.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I disvovered LOTR in my late 20s, but not because the movies, in fact I didn't watch them when released and was not interested on Tolkien work at all. A day however I read The Hobbit because I had nothing better to do and got hooked immediately. It called my attention how evocative the names of the places and the characters were, (even in Spanish, the translators did a fantastic job). I knew immediately there was a whole world behind such names. Never had such sensation with any other fictitious universe. Robert E. Howard took real world names like Zingara, Zamora, Brythunia, Cimmeria, Estigia... and used them in his Hyborean world. The names were also evocative but because they were extracted from the real world, lol, kind of cheating.

Didn't know Ultima games had a whole universe behind. I played Ultima VIII in Amiga500 iirc, liked it very much.

I've never read any Warhammer 40k novels and probably never will. However, I'm familiar with it through the games, the images (which are everywhere these days), and I've read a bit about the lore, the different races, and so on, and I find it quite fun and like the aesthetics, perhaps because I always enjoy a bit of excess. About living in that universe, would love to be a Adeptus Custodes or something like that and get an armor worth several planets.

Forgot about Discworld, I will add it to the group. I've heard about it many times and it sounds quite interesting, but I haven't read any of the 40+ novels yet. I probably will though.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Middle Earth is the gold standard, imho.

The world Homer creates for the Odyssey is rich and varied (counts as multi-authored since he's drawing on a hundreds-of-years oral tradition). Dante's is impressive as well. Milton's is impressive in its way, actually.

 

[Fippy]

Didn't know Ultima games had a whole universe behind. I played Ultima VIII in Amiga500 iirc, liked it very much.

Ultima 7 (The Black Gate) was superb back then.
First game (i think) where NPCs walked around in an open world, doing stuff like chatting with each other..opening / closing windows..day & night cycle with sleeping on beds.

 

[Birdjaguar]

LOTR
GOT
Wraeclast (Path of Exile)

 

[tjs282]

Of those on your list:

Middle Earth for the world building
Star Trek for where I'd most like to live
Discworld because that's the one I've had the most fun with

Honorable mention: the Culture (Iain M. Banks).

 

[soundjata]

Where is CIV4?
Didi Dazu!

Otherwise I would recommend "Appleseed" for a utopia we're really not far away from

 

[danjuno]

Fallout is the only one on the list I've really sunk my teeth into.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You don't have the Avatar world on your list. Movie #3 is out.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Middle Earth is fantastic, you can see the sincere dedication and passion Tolkien put into it. Nothing close to it can ever exist again, no one can escape Tolkien's shadow,. But even though I acknowledge Middle Earth to be far superior, I prefer Robert E. Howard's Hyborean world. Something about the grey morality (as opposed to Tolkien's (mostly) black-and-white) and the slightly despairing but not depressing mood just does it for me.

Some of Lovecraft's world is seriously great, but some of it is just downright silly and underwhelming. Lovecraft had an immense literary influence, and some of his own literary influences were great figures, but for me his work never escaped the Silver Age 'Astonishing Tales' level of literary merit.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Middle Earth is fantastic, you can see the sincere dedication and passion Tolkien put into it. Nothing close to it can ever exist again, no one can escape Tolkien's shadow,. But even though I acknowledge Middle Earth to be far superior, I prefer Robert E. Howard's Hyborean world. Something about the grey morality (as opposed to Tolkien's (mostly) black-and-white) and the slightly despairing but not depressing mood just does it for me.

Some of Lovecraft's world is seriously great, but some of it is just downright silly and underwhelming. Lovecraft had an immense literary influence, and some of his own literary influences were great figures, but for me his work never escaped the Silver Age 'Astonishing Tales' level of literary merit.

I agree, Tolkien's is better than Howard's in everything but LOTR good vs evil, white vs black pattern makes the whole thing a bit boring and predictable. Howard otoh doesn't even build a world 100% of his own, but rather take fragments of the real world regions and historical periods. Hyborean map is in fact the real world map with a much lower sea level. Still I prefer Howard's chaotic and brutal world, Conan's life is not about fighting evil and moral crap but pure freedom and adventure without compromise.

About which worlds I know and some opinions:

-Tolkien: Watched all the movies and read all the main books and then some more. Simply the best (the Hobbit movie trilogy though... money corrupts everything)
-Conan: have read all Howard's novels and lots of comics (plus the movie but that is not strictly canon). This is my personal world.
-Marvel and DC comics: some Marvel and Batman movies, some comics and little more. Don't like either of them indeed. The endless which-superhero-is-the-most-powerful lists are funny though.
-Harry Potter: all movies and all novels. Nice at first but got a bit silly. Grown men playing with magic wands shouting abracadabra is intrinsically silly after all.
-Game of thrones: the whole TV series, havent read the books. Too many deaths. That people has serious attitude issues.
-Star wars: main trilogy movies, prequel trilogy, actions figures when I was a kid and not much more. Gone from the coolest thing ever to pure crap. Haven't seen the last trilogy and probably never will.
-Cthulhu Mythos: most Lovecraft's novels and some games. Came for the stories, stayed for the ambientation.
-Dune: movies (I prefer Lynch version) and a number of Herbert's novels since the jihad Butleriana and stuff but got bored quickly.
-Fallout: all the games from Fallout 1 plus the series. Loved it all. The series seems to be descending into nonsense though, as it usually happens with game adaptations.
-The elder scrolls: TES 3,4,5, i am not much into the lore but fabulous games.
-Baldur's Gate: Same, played BG 1, 2 and haven't finished 3 yet but it is amazing.
-Asimov's Foundation: some novels long ago I hardly remember anything.
-Star trek: a couple of movies and the Big Bang Theory TV series. Last one was obviusly the best part.
-WH40k: read some stuff, played some games but have not much clue in reality.
-Avatar: first movie only. ew... RDR2 has better graphics.
-The rest: I know they exist.

Wow, I am kind of nerdy...