Post the worst idea for a fantasy world that you can think of!


Homebrew and House Rules

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I was looking over some fantasy world hooks lately, and I thought to myself, "Wow these are really bad!" So the thought came to me to think of the worst possible idea for a fantasy world. For example:

It is a fantasy world where Smurf-like creatures control all magic and miracles in a post-apocalyptic landscape where gravity is faulty and the continents are floating on seas made of dragon gas.

That is a bad idea, but fun to think of. Okay you're turn! :)


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An expy of post WWI pre WWII Europe with vampires, werewolves, mummies, dragon-kin, pixies, and magi... Except there are no magic or supernatural elements, only cosmetic differences, being types don't conform to easy 1:1 ratios (they aren't assigned by social, national, racial or religious categories), and the setting focuses on political and business negotiations.

Basically the Munsters: Versailles years.


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Kender world.


Scythia wrote:

An expy of post WWI pre WWII Europe with vampires, werewolves, mummies, dragon-kin, pixies, and magi... Except there are no magic or supernatural elements, only cosmetic differences, being types don't conform to easy 1:1 ratios (they aren't assigned by social, national, racial or religious categories), and the setting focuses on political and business negotiations.

Basically the Munsters: Versailles years.

Yes, especially bad...lol


Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Kender world.

Sorry, but that isn't bad enough. I need more...


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An entire world made up of clockwork gears. Each a different biome. Each only connected to each other at the teeth of the gears. Even the seas themselves are but vast cogs.

All the while the clockwork Overgod watches all...

The settings name: As the Gear Turns.


Chaotic_Blues wrote:

An entire world made up of clockwork gears. Each a different biome. Each only connected to each other at the teeth of the gears. Even the seas themselves are but vast cogs.

All the while the clockwork Overgod watches all...

The settings name: As the Gear Turns.

Yes, excellent, throwing in a soap opera hook...terrible idea...lol


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Drow Sea Shore, a Jersey Shore-themed campaign world where everyone has to play "totally rare" Good Drow that happen to be related to Drizzt, and they're all extremely smug about those two facts.

Liberty's Edge

Candyland.


Gulthor wrote:
Drow Sea Shore, a Jersey Shore-themed campaign world where everyone has to play "totally rare" Good Drow that happen to be related to Drizzt, and they're all extremely smug about those two facts.

Yes, definitely, I can see how that would be totally awful...lol


Stack wrote:
Candyland.

Actually, Candyland is a highly successful fantasy world, and a movie is in production, so that does not qualify for this thread. Sorry...


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Gridworld. Every surface has a 5-foot square grid superimposed on everything.

There is an ancient prophecy that the world will be washed clean of its grid. Some work to hasten the impending arrival of the Great Flood whilst others fight to stave off the impending doom of All That We Know.

Most folk just want to keep on taking their 5-foot steps.


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A world in which ratfolk are the dominant race and the entire planet is made of cheese, riddled with gnawed-out caverns. Most adventures involve solving the same dungeon maze over and over until you get really good at it.


The Mad Comrade wrote:

Gridworld. Every surface has a 5-foot square grid superimposed on everything.

There is an ancient prophecy that the world will be washed clean of its grid. Some work to hasten the impending arrival of the Great Flood whilst others fight to stave off the impending doom of All That We Know.

Most folk just want to keep on taking their 5-foot steps.

Gridworld could work...yes...


Greasy Magic Item wrote:
A world in which ratfolk are the dominant race and the entire planet is made of cheese, riddled with gnawed-out caverns. Most adventures involve solving the same dungeon maze over and over until you get really good at it.

It gets better and better...

Scarab Sages

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McDonaldland RPG - ever wanted to play a Hamburglar Rogue, or whatever the hell Grimace is? Now you can!

Liberty's Edge

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Farael the Fallen wrote:
Stack wrote:
Candyland.
Actually, Candyland is a highly successful fantasy world, and a movie is in production, so that does not qualify for this thread. Sorry...

Movie =/= not terrible


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Java, the programming language. The characters are chars, and the plot requires the MATLAB compiler SDK.


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I'm halfway convinced the real world is the worst possible fantasy world.


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Doomed Hero wrote:

I'm halfway convinced the real world is the worst possible fantasy world.

We live in a doomed, dystopian, pre-apocalyptic world actually.


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
McDonaldland RPG - ever wanted to play a Hamburglar Rogue, or whatever the hell Grimace is? Now you can!

Ronald McDonald scares the Hell out of me!


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Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Kender world.

Yep, a world with only kender deities and kender as the only race EXCEPT the PC's...


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I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
McDonaldland RPG - ever wanted to play a Hamburglar Rogue, or whatever the hell Grimace is? Now you can!

The Grimace requires mythic tiers to play.


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Chaotic_Blues wrote:

An entire world made up of clockwork gears. Each a different biome. Each only connected to each other at the teeth of the gears. Even the seas themselves are but vast cogs.

All the while the clockwork Overgod watches all...

The settings name: As the Gear Turns.

And the inhabitants all have a very regular geometry, even if it makes no functional sense, with the very lowest ranks having spherical or polyhedral symmetry fold increasing with rank, and the upper ranks having radial symmetry fold decreasing with rank.

Wait, that sounds an awful lot like Nirvana/Mechanus in the D&D campaign setting . . . .

Scarab Sages

Scythia wrote:


The Grimace requires mythic tiers to play.

...

...

...Why???


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I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Scythia wrote:


The Grimace requires mythic tiers to play.

...

...

...Why???

Nothing can kill the Grimace.

Spoiler:
Watch the Clerks animated series, it's hilarious.


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The Mad Comrade wrote:

Gridworld. Every surface has a 5-foot square grid superimposed on everything.

There is an ancient prophecy that the world will be washed clean of its grid. Some work to hasten the impending arrival of the Great Flood whilst others fight to stave off the impending doom of All That We Know.

Most folk just want to keep on taking their 5-foot steps.

And then there are the Cultists of the Hex. Those guys are weird. Half of them can't even walk in a straight line. Are they always sauced or something?

Scarab Sages

The Mad Comrade wrote:

Most folk just want to keep on taking their 5-foot steps.

Right, and everyone walks around like Groucho Marx wherever they go.

Dark Archive

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A world ruled by dragons, except dragons are 3 inches tall, incredibly nerdy and refuse to let any of the "lesser" species the chance to learn how to read


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A fantasy world that is just sad, pretentious elves and nothing else.


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a world were the pcs are commoners with 10 point buy but its a world designed for normal pc classes with mythic levels and 50 point buy and their 1st combat encounter is with just 4 cats normal ordinary house cats also the pcs cant gain access to magic but everything else can. that would be a pretty bad gaming world i would think


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Conga line world. The name says it all.


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"Noir World". It´s always 4pm, it rains, life is s+&~ty. The catch: There´s only one DMPC, all you´ve got to do as a player is taking turns in being the Voice from the Off and comment on what´s going on.


Scythia wrote:
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Scythia wrote:


The Grimace requires mythic tiers to play.

...

...

...Why???

Nothing can kill the Grimace.

** spoiler omitted **

First, its true Grimace would have an epic level CR and he's essentially unkillable...let's face it he's a dark, demon-god really.

Second, what the hell is Grimace? I mean really, what is he?

McDonaldland d20 RPG

Ronald McDonald, Bard 30th level, Chaotic Evil, Half-Demon.
He travels the Lands dressed as a Clown. He puts on really bad shows in every town he goes too, and he gives a balloon and unhealthy food to every child he meets.


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Constant lava rain will ruin just about anyone's day. You got to whip out your stone umbrella that is so heavy, it takes two hands to hold. Also, Pompeii.


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Being John Malkovitch, but for Elminster.

Liberty's Edge

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Middle Zealand, a lush, green paradise, where young Hogwarts symbologists fight orcs in the hills in the hopes of claiming the Iron Throne.


quibblemuch wrote:
Being John Malkovitch, but for Elminster.

That was a "Smurf" great idea! Plus a great movie!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Farael the Fallen wrote:
Second, what the hell is Grimace? I mean really, what is he?

Grimace's original incarnation was an evil, four-armed purple monster who stole milkshakes from people. He had four hands so it seemed reasonable that since he could carry a lot more milkshakes than your average person, he should. Then he had a change of heart (and a loss of limbs) and became one of Ronald's friends. His interest in milkshakes didn't necessarily go away and it even runs in the family: his uncle, Uncle O'Grimacey, regularly visits in March to bring everyone Shamrock Shakes.

To further thicken this milkshakey plot, Grimace may in fact be royalty, as the canon has mentioned that his brother is none other than King Gonga, ruler of all the grimaces.

Source


Yossarin wrote:
Farael the Fallen wrote:
Second, what the hell is Grimace? I mean really, what is he?

Grimace's original incarnation was an evil, four-armed purple monster who stole milkshakes from people. He had four hands so it seemed reasonable that since he could carry a lot more milkshakes than your average person, he should. Then he had a change of heart (and a loss of limbs) and became one of Ronald's friends. His interest in milkshakes didn't necessarily go away and it even runs in the family: his uncle, Uncle O'Grimacey, regularly visits in March to bring everyone Shamrock Shakes.

To further thicken this milkshakey plot, Grimace may in fact be royalty, as the canon has mentioned that his brother is none other than King Gonga, ruler of all the grimaces.

Source

Wow I had no idea Grimace had such a back story! Paizo should create a McDonaldland campaign for Pathfinder. However, Ronald McDonald is pure evil in real life. We all know this.


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"Ronnie" McDonald is Beyond Morality. You can't stop him. You can't smite him. His Charisma is so high that he has enough level dips that he can Smite Everything at least twice a day. The "Big Mack" is no ordinary sammich ...


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A fantasy world based on novels where the Mary Sue/Gary Stu protagonist has sex with anything that moves and becomes a deity whose every whim somehow subtly influences the world. PCs are all secondary characters in the setting and may end up dying to save the protagonist, having sex with the protagonist and becoming part of the protagonist's orgy, or both.


the Multiple Bob Universe is pretty extreme. Where Bob spelled backwards is still
Bob. Its a place where there is a little bit of Bob in everyone. THEY are out to eliminate BOB.


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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

A world made entirely of cheese...

...and the only PC race allowed has a race trait Lactose Intolerant.


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Anything involving anthropomorphic food would be awful.


A game world where characters who try to leave the island automatically turn into mindless undead. There is only one dungeon and that's a tower you have to complete to get to heaven or something. Any railroaded thing like that is just a mess.


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Let's see...where to begin...

We should have the setting be a weird mashup. It's a land of perpetual winter, to build tension, ruled over by an evil queen. I guess we can then add some creatures from greek mythology, but we'll have them dress like englishmen, and carry umbrellas and such like. Wouldn't want to try to get resonance or anything.

Yes, yes, good, good. Now we need to add some talking animals. Hmm...I guess we should just pick any old animals that are active in the winter. And because most animals hate the winter, they animals are the good guys, so it's like, nature and talking animals versus the evil queen.

Ooh, why not have the evil queen's nazi police force be some talking animals she made friends with?

And uh...then we can add in some things that are reminiscent of real world religion. A christmas character who celebrates the birth of Jesus would be nice. Ooh, speaking of Jesus, we can make him another character, but we'll disguise him as an animal. Always wondered what it must have been like for Jesus to celebrate his own birthday...

What else do we need? I guess we can add some more random elements, like, for example, there are from time to time pieces of modern technology just out in the open, but we won't ever acknowledge them as being out of place, will we? Because it's a fantasy, it doesn't have to make sense. We can also mix in, like, just stuck in there in the same world as a streetlamp, some ancient pagan imagery, like, for example, sacrificial tables or something. And we can make weird magic with rules that we make up as plot devices, so that if, say, one of our good guys gets killed we can just resurrect them using "deeper magic". Basically we just want to jumble things up a lot and jam in whatever we just had a dream about.

Can anyone think of a good name for our setting? I'm honestly at this point thinking that everything is so out of place that we should just pick a bunch of random nouns and that'll about do it.


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A fantasy world in which a futuristic sci-fi Earth is a sort of multiversal dumping ground for creatures from all sorts of other worlds, planes, universes, and dimensions. That's the premise that lets you throw in anything and everything plus the kitchen sink, with no regard for aesthetic, theme, balance, verisimilitude, or coherence.


Hey, thats my campaing idea! Plagiator!

Ok on a more seriouse note: a campaign where the players are magic items that can talk and constantly complain about how sad their life is to the DMPC that wears them.


Athaleon wrote:
A fantasy world in which a futuristic sci-fi Earth is a sort of multiversal dumping ground for creatures from all sorts of other worlds, planes, universes, and dimensions. That's the premise that lets you throw in anything and everything plus the kitchen sink, with no regard for aesthetic, theme, balance, verisimilitude, or coherence.

Nah.

Think I'll just have them be modern people who're just, you know, hanging out. Then they stumble into a magical world in like a closet or something.

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