[POLL] YOUR FAVORITE RPG SETTING

I'd like to say futuristic, but futuristic RPGs tend to go for Star Trek-style far future space operas. I'd love to see more cyberpunk RPGs.

author=Ralphrius
My favorite is a bit of a mix between Fantasy and Modern Day. I'm not talking Urban Fantasy, I think, but more on the Call of Ctulhu-y side of things, or maybe some of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure parts.
That probably didn't make much sense.

I get it! Basically, "not Shadowrun", right?

I'm all for doing stuff that is done less commonly. Basically anything except medieval and generic fantasy would probably automatically interest me... well, some types of modern settings interest me, anyway. The settings of games like Persona, Shadow Hearts and Parasite Eve interest me, but Pokemon and 80% of Earthbound do not. It's the genre of the story I guess in that case. I prefer an urban or military setting to a schoolyard one, and a dangerous or mysterious setting to a peaceful one.

The "generic fantasy" option is one I like to call "era-confused fantasy" because it stems from authors not being able to decide what their setting is. They can't figure out if they want bows and arrows or guns, whether they want people to ride into battle on horses or steam-tanks, whether refrigeration exist or not. They either don't have enough writing experience to figure out how to tell their story while maintaining a single consistent setting, or don't care enough about their story to establish a setting for it in the first place. So they just kind of randomly change the world's technological level by hundreds or even thousands of years from one location to the next, based on what's convenient or seems neat for that particular scene.

This definitely pisses me off way more than any of the other setting options. In fact, this is the only one that pisses me off. Medieval fantasy might not catch my eye, it might even bore me, but it's not going to actively make me angry like era-confused fantasy does.

There are games that qualify as "generic fantasy" where that's not the case, of course. But by and large when I hear that I think of games like FF7 or World of Warcraft where you have robots, skyscrapers and gatling guns alongside of platemail-wearing swordsmen, people riding on horses (or horse-sized birds), and major towns with no electricity or running water.

I'm with LockeZ on this one.

author=LockeZ
The "generic fantasy" option is one I like to call "era-confused fantasy" because it stems from authors not being able to decide what their setting is. They can't figure out if they want bows and arrows or guns, whether they want people to ride into battle on horses or steam-tanks, whether refrigeration exist or not. They either don't have enough writing experience to figure out how to tell their story while maintaining a single consistent setting, or don't care enough about their story to establish a setting for it in the first place. So they just kind of randomly change the world's technological level by hundreds or even thousands of years from one location to the next, based on what's convenient or seems neat for that particular scene.

^^Quoted for truth.

Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is that the setting should be believable and be consistent. Personally for me the story is more important than the setting.

I love fantasy. Magic and dragons and swords and kingdoms and crystals and powerful demons and treasures and wonder and color and-

Definetly Fantasy. Because in a Fantasy game you can mix magic with guns and elves with robots, and still don't look like an idiot when doing it. XD

Now I see why there exist so many games of that genre-type.

It's what the RPG genre cut its teeth on! Bring back having to become an ace so you can fly to the enemy stronghold on Venus where you explore beneath the pyramids to find ancient robots and the evil computer mastermind that you defeat with punch cards!

Since Fantasy seems to open up all of the options, I'm going for that, since even though I like a good, typical medieval setting, I also like having an interstellar spaceship crashing into a castle full of knights (yes, remembering Star Ocean: Til the End of Time).

I like "anything goes", so long as it's done in a way that's believable. Then again, I've been a Doctor Who fan since I was a little kid, so believable isn't necessarily required for my happiness either.