Your favourite fantasy world?

[Neyasha]

Lord of the Rings was the book that made me fell in love with the fantasy genre, when I was a teenager and Middle-Earth is still my favorite fantasy world. I love the feeling of a rich history with myths, legends and songs lurking behind every corner.
I also have a soft spot for Phantásien (Michael Ende: The Neverending Story). When I was reading the book as a child I so desperately wanted to enter this world just like Bastian did and I also love the original ideas like the colour desert Goab and the house of Aiuóla.

[rredmond]

Looking forward to seeing it

[XCali]

Yeah, I agree. I would love to see some of those maps.

[Clyph]

Lord of the Rings and maps through the ages for sure. I'll always have a soft spot for D&D's Greyhawk/eastern Oerth, iirc, colorful maps and my first major campaign crawl. Sci-fi mention : Numenera's continent o' past galactic building ages.

[Truelight]

An anachronistic blend of high fantasy and scifi with inspiration from 80s & 90's cartoons and anime!

[rredmond]

Funny enough there are tons of maps that can be used for that sort of thing. But from what I understand the author of the Pern books was against an RPG based on them. I don't think there ever was one developed, though I've heard folks using dogfight rules (like maybe from Dawn Patrol?) to add to other games to get more of a Pern feel. Be intrigued if anyone else knows any more.

[Naima]

I like fantasy worlds where Magic is mysterious and distant from the normality, I like the morrowind setting too as it was enough alien , but at the same time refreshing fantasy, I like the Game of Thrones setting , but there to be interesting you need a talented writer like JRR Martin I suppose.
Tolkien I like too but its now overabused and you see the clichè of Fantasy genre all around.

[Turambar]

Tolkien I like too but its now overabused and you see the clichè of Fantasy genre all around.

It wasn't cliche when Tolkien wrote it. It's just been overdone by all his imitators ever since.... Tolkien and Middle Earth are still the greatest in my book though, and no other worlds come particularly close imo (though I love Roshar from Stormlight Archive and the Westlands from Wheel of Time).

[Kellerica]

I can't believe I haven't posted in this thread despite being here for so many years.

For me it is, and probably always will be Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea. There is something about the simplicity and the slow pace of the world that really speaks to me. The magic system is fascinating, and I love the philosophical side of it as much as the mechanical. Le Guin had a very effective way of writing powerful forces - the Nameless Ones in Tombs of Atuan just feel... massive, larger than life, I can truly feel the pressure of the Labyrinth whenever I revisit the book, and her dragons really manage to conjure a sense of awe that I've seen few authors do succesfully. Earthsea is just one of those settings that just feels alive to me in a particularly vivid way. I've read the series countless times and never get bored of it.

I'm one of those types who has a lot of trouble learning tons of details, so for me the fact that the setting doesn't come with several volume's worth of lore and history is a treasured feature rather than a bug. I do love Lord of the Rings as much as the next guy, but I always feel like I'm not allowed to enjoy it, unless I'm also interested in reading all of the languages and history and myths and and family trees and every other tidbit that come with the setting. I don't know if that makes me a horrible fake nerd or whatever, but my memory is not that amazing and with my ADHD I really struggle keeping my focus when reading that kind of thing. It ends of feeling like homework, and I'm just not that into it. It's not that I'm not into worldbuilding, but I prefer mine baked into the story rather than as a side-dish to the story. And yeah, as I said, I just always get this sense from hard-core Tolkien nerds that I should be really ashamed of this...

[Ciel]

I would have to say Wizard of Oz first comes to mind, it and its sequels were a big part of my childhood growing up and had been a major inspiration in me desiring to pursue making fantasy universes of my own as well. I just loved the whimsical nature of it while also tackling some serious, perhaps even horrifying concepts [like the woman who changes between many heads in one book and tin man's origin story for example] - that's just charming.

Another fantasy old favorite that was also an inspiration to me I'd have to mention is His Dark Materials, something about questions about one's place in the world, multi universes, and confronting the corrupt and the literal heavens is always a fun time.