What is your favorite fantasy lore?

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TheManWithNoPlan

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The Elder Scrolls games were the first pieces of fantasy lore I ever had an interest in. So that probably.

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The_Ruiner

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@the_ruiner said:

I recently bought this book:

No Caption Provided

And it reminded me how much I really enjoy the Dragon Age lore. I've read the novels and most of the comics, and I love the way their history mirrors the history and cultures of Europe. And I enjoy the individual personalities of the races and cultures (Ferelden is my favorite).

But fantasy lore is a lot like taco bell food. A lot of it has the exact same ingredients, just repacked and prepared in such a way that it can change the flavor of the whole thing. So I'm curious what people's consider their favorite fantasy lore. I mean there are tons of options to choose from Warcraft, Diablo, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Secret of Mana etc. So what's your favorite lore?

HOLY FUCK. I did not know that exists! I need to buy that! Is it just one huge lore book I'm guesing?

Yeah it's full of history in a sort or light encyclopedia format. Lots of art too. Even a peak at enemy designs for DA 3.


The world(s) from the His Dark Materials trilogy comes to mind. Steampunk, but not, like, bullshit steampunk. Fun steampunk.

Love those books. Hated that movie.


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MideonNViscera

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Dragonlance.

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ervonymous

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@joshwent said:

Magic the Gathering? The setup rationalizing the gameplay is pretty cool.

Okay... I'll leave.

The stories and lore before the popularized planeswalkers (damn you Jace) were great. I'm cool with a setting where a philosopher is a match for a bear.

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EchoEcho

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Tolkien, certainly.

I know plenty of people who personally think his work is overrated, in a lot of cases based primarily on his capability as a storyteller -- and there is some truth to that, because his writing is certainly very dry, meticulous, and often awkwardly paced. But for me, at least, it is the sense of grandeur and depth to the world that hooks me with Tolkien; the world he built is so tangible that it's hard not to want to know more about it and the people who lived in it.

It's been nearly two decades since the first time I read Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, and even as an avid fan I'm still learning new things about Middle-Earth, its peoples, the languages, etc. all the time. It is an absolute shame that he wasn't able to finish all of the lore and stories that he intended to complete before he died.

For video games specifically, though, I'd say Elder Scrolls takes that pretty easily. It's one of the most thoroughly fleshed-out worlds I can think of that was designed entirely for a series of games, and the more you dig into it, the more depth you find. Sure, there are clearly things being added to the lore retroactively with each new release, but they manage to fit it all together nicely, in a way that doesn't break what already existed. And some of the writing that was done for the in-game books (and in some cases outside of the games entirely), especially during the Daggerfall and Morrowind era, is really excellent. I've spent some hours just reading through things on the Imperial Library website, which collects all kinds of texts from within the games and out.

And if you're willing to count Warhammer 40k as fantasy (despite there also being Warhammer Fantasy), that's an incredibly fun universe as well. They aren't quite as good as some at keeping their continuity straight, with fairly blatant retconning going on all the time, and the novels contradicting each other about certain subjects depending on who wrote them or when they were written. Games Workshop, for as notoriously protective as they are of their IP, doesn't seem to do a great job keeping their authors on the same page about things, so you end up with a lot of weird discrepancies and no real way to know what the "official" canon is. But most of that is fluff, anyway; you don't really need to know the exact height of a Warhound-class Titan to enjoy the universe, after all.

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Hunter5024

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I hate to be the asshole who says the thing that's currently the most popular, but I really love the lore in A Song of Ice and Fire. It's a beautifully ugly world, and the fact that most of the history is told through such unreliable methods leaves a lot to the imagination, which I think is pretty cool. It's interesting seeing a pretty realistic world slowly unravel into something more magical. As for video games, probably Dragon Age as well, (because it is just A Song of Ice and Fire, but with filthy knife-ears).

The Wheel of Time gets points from me for sheer breadth and excruciating amount of detail.

Which is funny because that's the reason I didn't choose Wheel of Time. I feel like if I knew a little less I might actually be more interested.

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ArtisanBreads

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I hate to be the asshole who says the thing that's currently the most popular, but I really love the lore in A Song of Ice and Fire. It's a beautifully ugly world, and the fact that most of the history is told through such unreliable methods leaves a lot to the imagination, which I think is pretty cool.

You're right here, can't believe I forgot it.

I also love the mystery and realism. It's something that always takes something off of for example Dragon Age, the fact that I can just find a comprehensive codex/resource or whatever that just lays it all out plainly. I like having to assemble that from a plot that, like the real world, has multiple theories, mysteries, etc.

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Gantrathor

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Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Lord of the Rings (or I guess Middle-Earth in general.) I also quite like what The Dark Tower's got goin' on.

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EchoEcho

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#59  Edited By EchoEcho

Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Lord of the Rings (or I guess Middle-Earth in general.) I also quite like what The Dark Tower's got goin' on.

Everything I know about the Dark Tower series I learned from Demons & Wizards. (And actually, it was enough to get me interested in checking it out ... even though I haven't yet.)

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bunnymud

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I like fantasy but I just don't read a lot of it. Finishing up the first book in the Kingkiller trilogy and that is a pretty damn good book

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SeanCoughing

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#61  Edited By SeanCoughing

As someone else already said A Song of Ice and Fire, I never was much into fantasy but that series whole universe is so cool and mysterious to me.

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Scrawnto

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@bunnymud said:

I like fantasy but I just don't read a lot of it. Finishing up the first book in the Kingkiller trilogy and that is a pretty damn good book

I was going to pick that. The second book is excellent too! It's incredible how good they are, given that those are the only two novels Patrick Rothfuss has had published. I tried to read Terry Brooks' first novel and I couldn't even get 30 pages in.

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Seppli

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#63  Edited By Seppli

I guess it's a draw between A Song of Ice and Fire and Berserk. Berserk suffers from having a lot of filler, at least the for the manga (which is still on-going), and the anime is incomplete and generally abbreviated (especially the recent movie trilogy), but overall - I definitely adore Berserk. A Song of Ice and Fire is a great read thus far, I just hope it'll get completed, and get completed well. A Game of Thrones is my favorite thing on TV in the last decade. So yeah, pick your poison.

And yes, Dragon Age is the next best thing to A Game of Thrones in the realm of videogames. I hope Bioware manages to set-up a true multiarc fantasy epic with Inquisition. I'd love that for the upcoming generation of Bioware games. As far as fantasy and videogames go, Warcraft certainly was the king of all fantasy settings in the last decade, it just needs an all-new game to elevate it to former heights, and with that I mean nothing less than either a Warcraft 4 or a true World of Warcraft 2.

With that, I let you feast on Guts vs 100. War really got shitty with firearms. I can imagine a man with a sword beating 100 lesser men on the field of battle. That just doesn't work with guns. Enjoy the believability of the Berserk fiction. Guts is really all that!

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CheapPoison

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Iron kingdoms, technically steam punk though.

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johnbakosh

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Warhammer

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mx

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I really like Middle Earth, I also think the warcraft lore is pretty cool. As far as books go the king killer chronicles are amazing. I also really like the way a song of ice and fire treats magic and other mystical stuff.

As far as science fiction goes is there anything that's like mass effect? Though a little more dystopian is ok to.

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manicraider

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I love Post-Apocalyptic lore. The whole idea of fighting for survival in a broken civilization with factions and building a resistance to those in power just seems so cool. I'll wait for the obligatory joke about how we're almost at that point.

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Levius

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#69  Edited By Levius

@manicraider: Totally, I will read almost anything Post-Apocalyptic.

I think my favourite lore would be Metro 2033. That book has such a great, ultra-grim tone and a brilliant sense of place, and I really dig that extra bit of supernatural stuff he flavours it with. I can't wait for the full translation of 2034 to come out on Amazon.

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HerbieBug

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#70  Edited By HerbieBug

Hmm... I'm going to interpret this as favorite fictional world building regardless of narrative quality as far as the stories and characters that take place in that world are concerned. That is why Peter F. Hamilton takes my #1 spot over the others.

1. Peter F. Hamilton's Nights's Dawn trilogy. Hamilton's awesome at world building. He is really good at making you feel like the atmosphere is thick and tangible. Yes, even when it's fucking dumb and the characters in it (I said this wasn't about characters) do especially dumb things. Hamilton also makes space travel both thrilling and never lets off on space travel being super dangerous and the whole thing could go pear shaped at any point just from the environment of space, let alone the antagonist threat. So yeah, he's not the best author as far as narrative goes. And I am most happy to slam him for every hammy line of dialogue, ridiculously stereotyped character, and narrative faux pas. Despite that, his worlds are always great.

2. Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. This one I don't think requires any explanation. Just read it if you haven't.

3. Connie Willis' alternate future started in Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog involving time travel. Willis' intentionally restrictive ruleset for time travel is so smart. She outright refuses to let the usual paradoxes have a place in her world through a variety of very clever, and quite ruthlessly obstinate, guidelines about what is and absolutely is not possible in her time travel system. Her books benefit greatly from that choice she made early on. Connie Willis is all around my favorite author.

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Lysergica33

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Anything from the Souls games. The lore for both Demon's and Dark Souls goes pretty deep, and there are even theories that tie the worlds of the two games together as one and considering all the dimension-y wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff those games partake of, it could actually work. The 6th archstone of Demon's Souls is supposedly the land of the giants.. Note that all the architecture in Dark Souls is oversized and far too big for humans. It's literally a land of and for giants. I don't think From has confirmed or denied it either way as far as I know, being the vague bastards that they are (although if they have outright denied it and someone has a source, please feel free to link me up!) which makes me just lean towards it being the case that they are indeed linked in some super vague, weird way. So yeah, take the lore of those two games and mush it all together and you have one DEEP ass fantasy world.

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Tarsier

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middle earth and ice and fire

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breadfan

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@joshwent said:

Magic the Gathering? The setup rationalizing the gameplay is pretty cool.

Okay... I'll leave.

The stories and lore before the popularized planeswalkers (damn you Jace) were great. I'm cool with a setting where a philosopher is a match for a bear.

I agree. I always loved learning little bits about the Magic: The Gathering worlds. Too bad the books were generally a complete mess.

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emprpngn

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#74  Edited By emprpngn

Tolkien and Elder Scrolls. I really like a lot of fantasy, but I haven't really kept up with anything new in recent years, unfortunately.

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sammo21

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I thought that I loved Dragon Age's lore until it came time for my pen and paper group to role play in it with the official pen and paper game. That was when I figured out I only liked the fiction and world so much.

Personally I like Dresden Files universe quit a bit as well as Forgotten Realms. I have played Pathfinder for years now and have started to become a fan of the world they have crafted there. Mass Effect is pretty great too and I wish they had an official pen and paper game for that, but oddly enough they do not.

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circlenine

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For fantasy I like A Song of Ice and Fire. For Science Fiction I like The Culture.

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StarFoxA

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Anything Middle Earth as far as hard fantasy goes is amazing. As for sci-fi, Mass Effect just can't be matched in terms of lore and depth.

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shinboy630

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@echoecho said:

@gantrathor said:

Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Lord of the Rings (or I guess Middle-Earth in general.) I also quite like what The Dark Tower's got goin' on.

Everything I know about the Dark Tower series I learned from Demons & Wizards. (And actually, it was enough to get me interested in checking it out ... even though I haven't yet.)

I am in the same boat. Demons & Wizards is amazing in the dumbest and best way!

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Nictel

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#79  Edited By Nictel

The Saga of Recluce series by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. I love how the whole order vs. chaos thing is not just about magic but also on how and what people do in their every day jobs.

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monkeyking1969

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I would have to say Tolkien with his Middle Earth wins for me. But, a close second is Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey are great works of historical fiction (fiction based on real events). In fact the very fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey still speak to us after thousands of years is testament to their quality as stories.

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Istealdreams

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#81  Edited By Istealdreams

Raymond Feists Midkemia series. Or the Dragonlance: War of the Lance and War of the Twins series.

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deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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I like the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, but mostly because it's a world in which the foundation is people and the high fantasy shows up to fuck with it. It's a world about politics and economics and human cultures that gets sidetracked by dragons and dark gods. Most other fantasy worlds are worlds of constant divine intervention to the point where the humans seem to be the sideshow.

And I like Dragon Age because it's a clone of ASoIaF.