Your favourite fantasy world?

[SharpPointyStick]

Favorite fantasy world...that's a tough one! If I had to choose just one it would; of course, be Middle-Earth ( bet no one saw that coming! lol). Like many others I'm sure, reading Tolkien as a child; 40 years ago or so, drew me into my life long love of fantasy...& fantasy maps! To visit The Shire, walk ancient forests with Ents & Elves, tread the deep halls of Moria...who wouldn't jump at the chance?

If allowed more picks...next on the list would be Mystara from the earlier worlds of D&D. Spent many years running adventures there & it's another world I'd love to visit! Many others are very cool, but my main criteria for a favorite is would I want to visit or live there. So while I may love reading about some of the "darker" worlds, wanting to visit is a hard NO! Warhammer, Warhammer 40K...awesome to read about, visit...HELL NO!!!! lol Most video game worlds also tend to be too gank heavy or over populated with nasty wandering monsters. For them, I'll restrict my visits to my gaming. So Tamriel, the world of The Witcher & Azeroth are also out, though I love playing games there!

After, Middle Earth & Mystara I would probably have to choose Faerun. D&D has had many compelling worlds but Mystara & Faerun would feel the most like "home" to me from all the years playing there & reading about the worlds. Experiencing the magic, all the creatures & races...would be awesome as long as I could manage to do it without getting killed! Greyhawk, Golarion & Glorantha would definitely get honorable mentions. The last 2 would be higher on the list probably but I'm just not as familiar with them as the others. Sure something else will occur to me later but thats good for now.

[4maram]

My favorite fantasy worlds are:

-Alagaesia: The first fantasy map I saw was in the one on the first page of the book. It was what made me start to draw ideas, and then came Minecraft and I saw that those ideas seemed huge on paper but in reality they weren't as much.

-Animorphs: I began reading the series on 2015 and ended it on 2017 (just a year before the web EspaPDF was closed) Now it's difficult to find the extra series: Megamorphs, Andalite chronicles, etc. Although Vegemorphs had something that left me like kinda depressed.

-Asimov's Foundation saga: from that series I've read The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Foundation trilogy, Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth. Although I still have doubts about how the Hyperspace works.

-Temerant: If you don't recognise the name of the continent, you may at least know the name of the main character, Kvothe. Temerant is the continent where Patrick Rothfuss has located the saga The Kingkiller Chronicle. A world where, while there is magic of "real nouns" like in the Inheritance Saga, there is also something akin to a science around it (simpathetic magic) and engineering also (artificery).

-Kyralia: The world where telecommunications don't make much sense. In this world, there are mages as usual, but these mages can talk with their minds over hundreds of kilometers! Instantly! Without latency! Also, great world-building effort.

These are 5 of the best fantasy worlds about which I've ever read. LOTR doesn't appeal much to me. Begun reading but I don't like the style very much. Same for GoT, although those I read the whole series. Still waiting for book 6 to come up.

[Redrobes]

I agree that the LotR world can be a bit dry and tedious with a lot of back story that is very obscure arcane and needs a read of the impenetrable Silmaril. I started reading LotR 4 times before I first finished the book. Its a slow start for sure. There is no comparable world for the back story, language and detail tho but its not the kind of colourful interesting detail that paints a pretty picture in the mind.

Another world which people have mentioned is the GoT. I think the world in that is rather dull and pretty standard. But the characters in the books are electric. Same goes for Belgariad series.

My favourite world has been mentioned about 5 times on this thread and its the Dragonlance Krynn. Whilst I like the characters too I do like the background of Krynn with the cataclysm and also that it describes the moons and stars as being important to the fantasy universe by representing the gods. I also like some of the descriptions of the places as they are full of detail and life. Some of the places like the towers and the library of Astinus are imaginative as well as important story arcs. I also think that the world works. Its not just place after place of similar dry kind of towns and cities. Its very vibrant, dynamic and interesting but does not have any of the back detail of Middle Earth. To get a proper rounded view of Krynn you need to read the chronicles and the legends. The characters during the books of the legends bounce around the place a lot more and pick a better world view. I am told that there are 3 more books written for the series but there are some legal shenanigans to publishing them. But when they are out I will surely get them.

[Greason Wolfe]

Think a fair number of folk have trouble with the old style of English that Tolkien used in his writing. I know that the first time I read LotR, it was troublesome until I got used to the language flow. After that, I was fine. Dennis McKiernan writes in a similar fashion, and I completely forgot to mention his Mythgar world and Julian May's Pliocene Exiles world as a couple of my favorites along with the world of Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away.

[eepjr24]

For me the list would go something like:

1. Discworld
2. Dresdenverse
3. Amber
4. Middle Earth
5. Pyrdain

Lots of good series mentioned in this thread. I like The Land from Thomas Covenant but the story arcs turn me off somewhat due to the content and self loathing. I also like Temerant from The Kingkiller Chronicles. And A Wizard in Rhyme by Christopher Stasheff. Of course Xanth by Piers Anthony. Several of Mercedes Lackey's lands are nice. For darker stuff, Simon Green does nice worlds.

- E

[Simkin]

My favourite fantasy books are:
Lord of the rings
Dragonlance
Shannara (I created a RPG for this world a looong tine ago and played with a group of friends for 3 years a campaign)

But my favorite RPG is ARS MAGICA, so my favorite setting in medieval Europe, with all his legends and secrets and mysteries. One of my best books ever is Baudolino (Umberto Eco), and I vividly suggest all of u to read it (if u didn't do it).

[quirky_cartographer]

My favourite fantasy books are:
Lord of the rings
Dragonlance

I have to agree that Dragonlance was a great world. I really got into that trilogy as well as the other books Weiss and Hickman wrote. I was really sad to see they got shafted by WotC recently. I would have loved to have read the trilogy that wrapped everything up! Maybe in the future. I hope.

Also, LotR got me hook, line, and sinker into fantasy. I have to give a mad shout out to those books, too.

[Gamerprinter]

I don't have such a thing. My favorite world setting, is whatever world setting I happen to be playing in, designing for, reading about at the time. Right now, I've been working on a larger setting, and a specific setting within the larger setting as the background material for all the Starfinder sci-fi/science fantasy adventure modules and rules supplements I've been publishing for the past 3 years. I have two other writers involved creating their own modules and supplements, but all loosely set inside the settings mentioned. Sure I loved Middle Earth when I was reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but that was 8th grade, and enjoyed whatever was the setting I was reading about the time, but I tend not to carry those settings with me more than some distant inspiration that might apply to settings I dream up on my own. As a hobbyist roleplayer, while I played in Greyhawk in the earliest campaigns, it wasn't more than a year or two playing D&D that I began building my own settings, and have never used the default setting of any game system since - I never used Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Rokugan. While I did play in Ravenloft and kept Barovia, I immediately began creating alternative domains beyond Ravenloft. I care nothing for the canon of published settings, and again seldom use settings that I haven't created myself.

[Marcolino]

I like so much fantasy settings.

Lord of the Rings
Forgotten Realms
Dark Sun
Dragon Lance
Westeros
Dune
Warlands (Image Comics)

[Valtharius]

The Young Kingdoms - Elric Saga - Michael Moorcock
Midkemia - Magician Series - Raymond E. Feist
The World - The Belgariad - David Eddings
Eosia - The Elenium - David Eddings
Errama - Lord of Dûs - Lawrence Watt-Evans
Middle-Earth - Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien