[Talk] Favorite settings?

[Eleanor]

As a follow-up to what I posted last week, here's a complimentary thread to talk about... settings! Specifically, your favorite stages that you guided your characters through. Be it a Pokémon route, a vibrant city, some kind of dungeon, or some random place in space that defies physics!

I'm mostly talking about settings built by the Game Master, those which end up being showcased at the start of each chapter, but if you want to include some specific places that exist in the context of those larger stages, sure! And please, let's also talk about what made those places the perfect backdrop for your characters and their story ♡

 

[moon]

I'll just say, Rock Tunnel of love ended up being w i l d.

 

[Aquacorde]

hhhhhh I wanna say Mount Chimney Park Reserve because it's gonna be amazing but we're not even there yet lmaooo

In Trainers- Rock Tunnel was out of control LMAO very good time there... Routes 9 and 12 were good too... but my actual honest favorite was Route 11. The vibes were immaculate and I had a lot of opportunity to do a lot of different things and just. Have Casey go on a physical and mental journey of discovery or something idk. I think the best part was just straight up the concept I came up with for the provided content- my goal was for Casey to go on his own safari, to see every Pokémon on the route, and there were A Lot lmao. I don't think I even quite hit that goal but I got to write a lot of interesting moments that I wouldn't have otherwise thought about!

 

[Eleanor]

I'll just say, Rock Tunnel of love ended up being w i l d.

Late but... absolutely! That was really crazy and it's been so interesting to see what everyone was able to come up with. Traps, lakes, ruins, rogue Pokémon, drama... and it wasn't even that closely connected to the roleplay's actual plot, was it? It shows how inspiring a single description and a single vibe can be, imo~

I'll add a mention to some of the Hoenn Square 1 locations we're close to get to in the IC thread... Mauville and Mauport Bridge are very interesting concepts and I really love how some relatively simple ideas (a big city, a bridge) have been turned into such unique places! And on the same note but with a completely different timeframe and universe... some of the places we had the chance to explore in Final Fantasy: Alternate were definitely cool! Very lively, very interesting, and definitely something I wasn't used to prior to that roleplay ^^;

Not sure if I was able to replicate those vibes that well with my own rendition of the Sevii Islands in Together Forever - I do know I've been doing way too many research on the Sevii Islands' real world counterparts, the Izu and Bonin Islands, and it's been very interesting to take elements from there and add them to my roleplay settings - but that might be a topic for another time... ;)

 

[QueenNothing]

As far as settings I took good advantage of I guess I'd say Littledale from Hoenn Square One. This isn't to say other settings weren't interesting it was just that I didn't feel I wrote them in a very interesting way and just ended up seeming kinda plain in my posts. But Littledale was simple enough for me to grasp that I'm proud of how that turned out, having posts of little more than mundane farm work and some conversations mixed in probably turned out to be my best work in RP so far. (Props to Eleanor for the Avril and Akira JPs. I miss June's lesbian aunts)

Route 12 was fun too, I think that was the first time I had to write rain. I really like the imagery of Gwen being completely soaked from the rain but not giving a single fuck how much of a mess she is. The factory mission was the icing on the cake for that.

 

[gimmepie]

I find it really hard to narrow it down to a single element of a setting - like a singular city or route or dungeon or any of that. I generally tend to look at settings in a more "big picture" scale. I'm really proud of the world I've built/am building for the 5e mini-campaigns I've been doing with friends. It's by far the biggest world-building exercise I've undertaken - a detailed planet basically - which is why it is still ongoing. I've done most of the worldbuilding for the more central continents of the world now (which is where the campaigns have been set) but there is also a continent in the southern hemisphere I have a lot of work to do on (that'll be next after these two are finished) as well as an arctic continent I need to work on too. So far, I feel like my players have really engaged with the world and its lore and it brings me a lot of joy. I look forward to the eventual long-term campaign I'm going to set there.

I really liked the world I built for Final Fantasy: Alternate, a text RP I ran here. It was really fun to incorporate all of those familiar elements into a new setting with its own history, conflicts and lore. I might try to do something with it again one day, but I forgot to move a lot of the worldbuilding out of the Discord server when I deleted it so some of it has been lost unfortunately.

If I were to try and narrow it down to more specific, singular locations... the doppelganger creation facility dungeons I'm using for a few games I run in a Westmarches-styled campaign have been a lot of fun. I liked the first one a lot and I'm excited for the second this coming Saturday. They come with some fun lore attached as well as some fun mechanical stuff.

I liked running my version of Athkatla, a canon d&d city too. It's a really messed up place, but it was fun to use that messed-up nature as the basis for that group to take a sudden swerve into playing with backdoor dealings and political intrigue that also tied back into the larger plot of the campaign. It was one of my favourite arcs of the campaign so far.