Personally I’m really obsessed with the lore in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
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Dune is incredibly unique. Scifi without computers and genetic magic. All politics. The books are outstanding.
Caves of Qud was my first contact with post post-apocalypse. Can’t even begin to convey how strange and magical everything feels in that universe.
The latter books are just weird with all the sexual imprinting and other weirdness which sounds more like written by a horny teenager than an adult.
Caves of Qud is amazing.
The Expanse or First Law
I’ve never heard of First Law, but it being mentioned alongside the Expanse is reason enough for me to check it out
10/10 recommend. I’m 6/9 through the expanse and on 7/10 with Joe Abercrombie. (these are number of books, not ratings)
Joe’s books are great. After the first trilogy, it’s 3 stand-alone and a compilation of short stories. So if you don’t love his stuff (if you liked the expanse you will) you can be done after the First Law Trilogy
My lemmy username is directly related to the First Law Trilogy
He’s possibly my favorite character of any series. I’ve gone through all of the books 3 times.
Is probably say coal shivers. I kind feel like he’s ambercrombies favorite as well since he’s actually in all of them
I’d say the same. And he’s got so many good quotes, most (killin’ aside) relatable.
Logan Ninefingers (First Law) Amos Burton (Expanse) Wayne & Steris (Mistborn, Era 2)
I don’t think there’s another character I like more than these folks. Logan probably sits at the top though.
LotR - it’s really fucking hard to top especially when Tolkien was pioneering the field.
His Dark Materials is worldbuilt very well, I also like ATLA for its worldbuilding, even if it’s a bit simplistic at times.
HDM for sure.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is really solid, if limited. Not sure how similar it is to the non-advance version.
Right now I’m way down a Brandon Sanderson rabbit hole, so I guess the Cosmere? I’d say Stormlight Archive, but Mistborn is really cool because they’re set at the inflection points in the planet’s history. The first arc is excellent, and it changes the world. The second arc is set in the future, with mythologies based on the first arc and scientific progress based on secrets uncovered in the first. The changes in the use of magic are really cool. There’s a third arc planned to be set in the future from there.
But the Cosmere as a whole shares some core concepts and characters can move across it, and that comes into other standalone works like (3 of 4) secret projects and a bunch of other stuff.
Agreed - Brandon may not be the best at certain facets of writing, but he’s nothing short of virtuosic when it comes to worldbuilding. The cosmere is a masterwork in this regard.
I love his work and bought physical copies of all of Stormlight, Mistborn, and just a couple days ago the pretty “premium” hardcovers for the secret projects, just to have on my shelves.
My one thing is that his introductions are almost always slower than I’d like. Though ironically he did better in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn arc and I like the Vin arc more.
I agree. He draws out books a lot, and as much as I love his writing, it can get tiring waiting for the plot to go somewhere in mistborn
I said it elsewhere but it felt like he meant for the final empire to be standalone, then was scrambling a bit in the well of ascension to keep the plot going.
But then some of the part I thought felt slow paid off in the conclusion, so IDK. I like the pacing in most of the rest of the stuff. It’s just the introductions. Like Tress of the Emerald Sea, for example, it took so long for her to actually start her adventure.
I love Brandon because he’s an absolute machine at writing. I’ve given up on too many amazing series because I just don’t believe the authors will ever finish the work. Brandon is a breath of fresh air in that regard.
That being said, he has a really specific range to his writing. Personally, I can’t binge too much on his work or I get a little bored or restive or something. Kind of like eating cereal for every meal – it’s great at breakfast, but at some point, you just need some variety.
I feel like Brandon Sanderson’s individual worlds lack something in worldbuilding which I can best describe as “unknown history”. it feels like he tells too much about the world he reveals which makes the world feel smaller. like if there are ruins that are part of the story you’re probably going to learn how those ruins came to be. this may be related to all the worlds being post apocalyptic and could be intentional
I consider lore and worldbuilding to be related but different concepts. Lore is the details of your world, worldbuilding is the way you deliver those details.
My favorite example of worldbuilding is The Dark Crystal, both the film and series. The lore is standard fantasy stuff, but the intricacies of the world are so rich and they unfold so naturally. It felt like a real world, and I felt like very little of what I learned about that world was simply narrated to me. The world was built through tiny details, interactions and observations, throwaway lines of dialogue, and effectively so.
Call me boring but Randland (The Wheel of Time).
I read those books over and over again just to spend more time there. I still remember more details about the cultures, cities, and fashion in those books better than I could ever remember the plot. The magic and higher moral themes were very simplistic in comparison to other books but RJ really excelled at fleshing out a continent with diverse and unique peoples that made sense in that world.
The Elder Scrolls is probably the one I’ve had the most fun theory-crafting about, but I will admit that you have to pick and choose what to care about.
Also the old Wipeout racing games had a remarkable amount of background plot going on that was really pretty fun. The self-awareness to poke fun at Fusion’s poorly-received changes as being the in-universe result of megacorp meddling for mass market appeal gave me a good laugh, but you can piece together a surprising amount of the world from random references in team flavour text
What’s lovely about Elder Scrolls lore is it very much feels like you have to investigate or draw your own conclusions about things. Things can rarely be taken at face value since people and things in the world will contradict each other. At a surface level it sounds like there is no cohesion but even the bias itself can be revealing.
The original StarCraft and Brood War. I’ve always hoped a movie would be made about the story/lore but hollywood doesn’t exactly have a good track record with turning games into movies.
I still remember the first time I played StarCraft and watched the intro movie, when the battle cruisers left it blew my child mind.
You know, I’ve always liked the Avatar:TLA’s worldbuilding
Hell yeah. Just watched the series for the first time ever this year and absolutely loved it.
Chinese xianxia and wuxia shows. I’m a brown person from the American southwest who grew up with mostly European mythology and fantasy stories. Learning about a very different world of myth and lore has been endlessly fascinating and exciting for me. I even homebrewed a ttrpg around it so I can share some of the cool concepts and stories I have learned.
In your opinion what are this genres masterpieces or best introductions?
I certainly don’t know much but my entry points were Journey to the West and Detective Di.
I’ve enjoyed the world building of the Warhammer 40k setting.i started out with the models in high school and moved into the books to not have to deal with sweaty, agro nerds wanting to rules lawyer the game into no fun. So many interesting stories set in the grimdark universe, and a ton of great characters to follow.
Peter F Hamilton is another good one, though his world building is rather dense. Hell tell you all about how the roads on some alien world are enzyme bonded concrete or how the magic paths traverse entire worlds and systems. Definitely not for everyone, but the audiobooks are great (John Lee has such a soothing voice) and I’ve heard them so many times they make a great media to fall asleep to when I’m traveling.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series.
Just a breathtaking setting that begins with the first hundred settlers and traces the intrigue, terraforming, conflicts, and dreams of the colonists. It’s a sweeping epic written on a human scale.
BattleTech/mechwarrior. I think it started as a tabletop game? Lots of media came from it, and video games pop up every few years starting in 1989.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech
The series began with FASA’s debut of the board game BattleTech (originally named Battledroids) by Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babcock III and has since grown to include numerous expansions to the original game, several board games, role playing games, video games, a collectible card game, a series of more than 100 novels, and an animated television series.[3]
The main wiki: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/
There was a so bad it’s good cartoon in the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLJM4vjMdhc
Tons of novels, two modern TTRPG systems, two current tabletop miniature wargame rule sets.
A new action game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2000890/MechWarrior_5_Clans/
A very good turn based game very closely following the tabletop rules: https://store.steampowered.com/app/637090/BATTLETECH/
A multiplayer online action game: https://mwomercs.com/
Most recently, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, had great world building and character development.
