Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Druid/ranger 'nature' alignment and Eldritch Weird Stuff alignment.

I find presenting it as a four-way structure odd because the Lovecraft inspired nonsense is generally opposed to good no less than it is to 'bunny'. Makes the the whole thing quite asymmetric.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

The most distinctive thing I've seen or heard of is the DF chromatic magical styles. I found them really interesting

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I fundamentally disagree. I don’t think that lack of detail puts an emphasis on soft world building. That’s just an open field for the GM to exploit as he sees fit.

I’d argue that with dungeon fantasy you could just as easily end up with middle earth as hogwarts. In fact, I’d even suggest that groups with mostly power gamers, as is likely for dungeon fantasy, tend to favor hard worlds, because that encourages preparation and planning based on the details and rules established, as opposed to finding out your entire build was rendered useless when you got back to school after summer because the GM decided to change the mood/tone/atmosphere of the campaign (disclaimer: it was more than a decade since I read HP). Bear in mind, also, that the analysis in the video is for writing (where the author has absolute control and readers/viewers are passive) – not gaming (which is an actively cooperative pastime).

Of course, that’s not to say there are no unanswered questions in dungeon fantasy. “Who built this dungeon again, why are there a handful of seemingly incoherent monsters and traps here, and how long have they been surviving on the pure hope that a band of moro-, ahem, adventurers would stumble on their lair wile leaving the rooms intact (not to mention unspoiled...)?”

However, I’d say that these questions might have “logical answers”, but according to dungeon fantasy logic (if, say, making advances in dark magic requires a pact with the devil, among other things, leaving visual markings shunned by the larger society, I’d say a plethora of random dungeons is to be expected). That’s why there’s such a thing as a dungeon crawl genre.

Sometimes details may be left up to the players’ imagination. Sometimes they may be conveniently ignored (monster remains is usually not a commonly occurring feature, unless it’s part of a “creative” solution to the problem at hand). On the other hand, I have no idea how hygiene is handled in minas tirith (sewers carved into the, and while it likely has a detailed answer somewhere in Tolkien’s works, I don’t think that’s the dotted i that pushes it into “hard territory”.

As for the dungeon fantasy world in general, as mentioned by a previous poster, there’s a mysterious east, a frozen north, etc, all centered around a focal kingdom. From there, I might easily improvise that pixies and trolls generally come from a local enchanted forest, dwarves and goblins from the tall mountains, and any of the locations I choose to include may be fleshed out in detail, including pixie society, goblin customs, etc. It may not make sense from a TL8 human perspective, but that may even be the point (it’s not just foreign but another race, sometimes even alien or weirder).

There’s a difference between having unanswered questions on one hand and having unanswerable questions or choosing not to answer them (even when players beg for it) on the other. The later would be more in the spirit of Spirited Away (unintended...).

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Where are those from?

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Depends on how things are handled. The natural inclination is to essentially treat Squid as a variant of Evil, but that's not necessary - Squid can easily be neutrally disposed toward Good and Evil (it doesn't bother making a distinction) but be rather diametrically opposed to Bunny, on account of Squid being fundamentally unnatural (at least from Bunny's perspective). Basically, Good and Evil are almost always opposed, as are Bunny and Squid, but Good and Squid or Good and Bunny can work together, as could Evil and Squid or Evil and Bunny.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Squid-alignment has always seemed to be omni-malevolent in every case I can think of. It's potentially neutral between 'good' and 'evil' in the sense that it doesn't care which one it's eating.

If it's a two-axis diagram, what's in the good/squid corner of it?

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Bunny can be pretty hostile to Good and Evil as well. It's not like Good and Evil are friendly to untamed wilderness. They clear land and exterminate or exploit creatures of the wild.

But no, calling it a four way structure is a D&D joke. Bunny and Squid aren't opposed the way Good and Evil are. I have incidentally considered doing an Order and Chaos opposition in a fantasy setting, but not one which is about obeying or eschewing human laws. Instead the basic split is that Chaos wants things to be more magical, and Order wants things to be less magical.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

The presence of Artificers is an interesting twist in DF. They're not part of the base books, but gadgeteers that go delving are fairly distinctive.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I've also been kicking around a DFish setting idea for a while in which Good and Evil are matters of personal taste but Order and Chaos are of Cosmic Import, with all the deities aligned toward one or the other in ways that ignore G vs E entirely. Rather than pro- or anti-magic, however, the divide is over stability vs change, with the laws of mortals caught in the crossfire like everything else (eg: The local God of Death is Order all the way, the local Goddess of Love is Chaos on steroids - The only one who straddles the line is the God of Invention, patron of the Artificers, but he's been in a coma since the last Gods' War, my stab at explaining why the setting has been frozen at DF TL for a looooong time now).