Most fantasy settings in roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons are carbon copies of classic literature like Lord of the Rings - most, but not all. The following roleplaying games consciously break from the standard, Dungeons & Dragons-like fantasy mold with novel takes on magic, allusions to non-medieval European cultures, and a willingness to go gonzo with post-modernism and weirdness.
Authors like Robert Howard (of Conan the Barbarian fame), J.R.R. Tolkein, and Fritz Leiber (who wrote the Fafhrd and the Grey Mo stories) wound up popularizing certain fantasy tropes that game designer Gary Gygax codified in Dungeons & Dragons, the world's first roleplaying game. Cross-fertilization between fantasy novelists, tabletop gamers and video game designers has led to a standard western fantasy world seen frequently in media: a continent where humans live alongside elves and dwarves, where goblins lurk in dungeons, where dragons brood over hordes of treasure, and where adventurers set out to brave the monster-haunted wilds with sword and spell in hand.
Some of the roleplaying game settings below shake up this classic formula by drawing from real-life history and cultural legends distinct from the Norse/Finnish mythology that inspired early fantasy novels. Other game settings set out to invert and subvert the classic tropes seen in fantasy worlds, introducing bizarre schools of magic and exploring the twisted implications of worlds where being a wandering magically killing for cash is a viable career path. Either way, the worlds of these games aren't your typical fantasy realms.
Creative Fantasy RPGs - RuneQuest & Glorantha
First published in 1978, Dungeons & Dragons and added some novel twists. First, the game system didn't use character classes, instead letting players choose from a vast list of skills to create their own unique heroic characters. Second, RuneQuest took place in the vividly-drawn fantasy world of Glorantha, a unique setting styled after the mythology and cultures of the Bronze Age, where valiant heroes ride to war for the glory of god and tribe, elves are human-shaped plants, cults worship the power of Runes, and the world is literally flat.
Creative Fantasy RPGs - RIFTS: The Most Popular RPG Nobody Actually Plays
Published at the dawn of the 1990s, RIFTS was an RPG made for veteran roleplayers, with infamously complicated rules and a kitchen-sink world that blended heroic fantasy, science fiction, post-apocalypse, and Cyberpunk elements into one demented whole. A typical RIFTS game (assuming players are willing to navigate the complex mechanics) takes place on an Earth ravaged by a nuclear apocalypse that opened portals to both alien worlds and realms of magic. This lead to scenarios where a fantasy adventurer, psychic, power-armored super-soldier, and Atlantean Vampire Hunter might embark on a quest to chase the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse through a portal leading to another galaxy.
Creative Fantasy RPGs - Dungeons & Dragons: Planescape
There are fantasy settings in Dungeons & Dragons like Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms, classic examples of Tolkien's Planescape: Torment. Between the realms of Heaven, Hell, Mechanus, and Limbo, the city of Sigil lies at the center of the Great Wheel, a metropolis whose doors lead to any setting in the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse if one has the right key. The various factions of Sigil engage in philosophical knife-fights that can warp and reshape reality, while the mysterious Lady of Pain murders any god who enters Sigil, along with any fool who dares to worship her as a goddess.
Creative Fantasy RPGs - Spire: The City Must Fall & Heart: The City Beneath
The two signature roleplaying games of game studio Rowan, Rook and Decard are two sides of the same coin - the coin in question being a familiar yet weird spin on western fantasy. In Spire: The City Must Fall, players take on the role of dark elf insurgents, assassins, and illicit mages waging a war of resistance against the cruel, cybernetic high elves, who conquered their towering city of Spire. The vast underground labyrinth beneath spire is the setting of Heart: The City Beneath, a surreal, horror-tinged take on the dungeon-crawling genre pioneered by Dungeon & Dragons. Desperate, fortune-seeking adventurers delve deep into the titular Heart, a living, shifting dungeon with secrets, treasure, and enemies that grow all the more warped and grotesque the deeper you travel. These are the perfect games for players who enjoy works like House of Leaves (or want to play a sorcerer with a colony of magical bees living in their chest).
