Top 5 Epic Fantasy Board Games

5. Super Fantasy Brawl

This one is the fastest of these games in this group, but one that is a ton of fun to play. You take in some fantastical characters into a battle arena to see which group will win. It’s not just a drawn out fighting game, it’s a quick and punchy fighting game with goals that you need to think about as well.

And the game play for Super Fantasy Brawl is very simple. You have three activations you can do on your turn. Each one for different colors of cards that you might have in your hand. So it’s possible to have less, but very rare. And those activate cards that match their colors, as I said, so you might activate the same character more than once.

If this was just a knock out the enemy game or just a get goals game, I don’t think it would be as fun. But having both elements in the game, it creates a nice bigger experience. And you can get some epic turns where you start by completing a goal and then knock out your opponents character for a big swing.

4. Dwellings of Eldervale

Next up is the only euro game on the list, though some others might have euro tendencies. Dwellings of Eldervale is about building out a map, fighting monsters, fighting other players, and dwelling. The combat isn’t complex and the itself isn’t that complex but it has those cool moments. And that’s what I look for in an epic game.

One of the coolest parts is that each color you can be has their own faction powers. So you get to do things and break rules in ways that other players can’t. And not only does each color have it’s own faction, they have factions, on each side of the board to pick from. So the game comes with a ton of combinations for how you play.

3. Roll Player Adventures

Roll Player Adventures is one that I’m going through right now and loving. The game offers great story and an interesting puzzle with how you play. If you’re familiar with Roll Player, in that game you basically roll up RPG style characters. In Roll Player Adventures you take those characters through an adventure.

The adventure is great, much bigger and weirder than I’d have expected. But the game play makes it a lot of fun as well, not just the story. It’s built around collecting cards to manipulate dice. As you come across a challenge or a battle, you take dice and need to get them to the right numbers and colors. You seed what you have with colors based off of attributes, but the number is the roll of a die. So how that goes, no one knows, and you need to use your cards to try and get that to what you need.

2. Oathsworn

Oathsworn is the one that I’ve played the least of it. But it deserves to be on the list from what I’ve played. You battle monsters, explore cities, and do a lot of interesting things. One thing I like about the game is how it’s split into two parts. You have a story portion and then a combat portion. On my space game list I had one like that as well, ISS Vanguard, though split differently.

The story portion is going to help you know what’s going on in the world and goals to have. It might give you a bonus to it as well for that combat that is coming up. Or at least help you avoid bad things. And then you get into a boss battle combat. And in that battle you play down cards that flow around your character board, and draw cards or roll dice to see how big a hit you can do, or if you do hit.

Plus as a campaign game, the game offers a lot of epic to it. I think that campaign games lend themselves well to epic. And Oathsworn offers an epic campaign, but not one that is too long.

1. Gloomhaven

Finally we have Gloomhaven. And this one is interesting, because I think that the original Gloomhaven was epic in scope of each scenario but lacked some of the epic story nature that I expect from a big epic fantasy campaign game. It might be getting fixed in version two of Gloomhaven which I’ll likely pick up the upgrade pack for.

But Gloomhaven does have a big story to it, it’s just not as ingrained as some stories. And it also really does provide those epic scenarios. All of that with a really cool system of playing down two cards each activation. You use one of them for a top action and one for a bottom action. When you pick the cards, you know what you want to do. But as the round goes on, if you don’t go fast enough, what you want to do might change. Overall just a great system.

Final Thoughts

As I wrap up the themes that catch my eye, it’s worth noting that there are plenty of themes that interest me. I talk about epic fantasy or epic sci-fi, and those always catch my interest, but I like fantasy and sci-fi in general. Or something odd like The Bloody Inn where you are killing and hiding the dead bodies of guests from the cops to see who can make the most money. It’s a silly premise that is very interesting.

Like any game it still needs to have a good review. Or there needs to be something mechanically that gets me interested in the game. And all of the games on the list, I’m interested in for more than just the theme. Though, a theme and great cover might get me looking at it sooner rather than later.

What’s your favorite epic fantasy board game?

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The issue with that is that almost any game is going to have someone love it. And I catch a lot of the hype from places. If The Dice Tower, Man vs Meeple, One Stop Co-op Shop, Meet Me At The Table, Tablenauts, and more talk about it, I will hear about it. So I need ways to pick and choose. One way is theme. So what are 5 themes that will draw my attention?

Top 5 Board Game Themes

The list isn’t really in any order, not even the order I thought of them. Also, no game is a must buy if it falls into these themes, but I will pay attention.

5. Epic Space

Let’s start out saying, space games are great, because a lot of them are epic. But I specify that I appreciate the epic ones. The ones that just have a theme of space and are light filler, I’m not going to check out immediately.

But when a game like ISS Vanguard or Star of Akarios is announced, I want to know more about them. If it looks like it does something cool mechanically and can give me a big epic story, I am going to be interested in it.

4. Epic Fantasy

Next is epic fantasy. It’s basically the same thing just with magic instead of laser pistols. I want something that is big and epic and that makes it feel like I’m going on an adventure through a fantasy setting. Whether that is grim and dark or light and wholesome, I’m up for either.

So you have things like Gloomhaven, Oathsworn, Solomon Kane and more here. Even the weird west like Shadows of Brimstone catch my attention. And I listed off a lot of campaign games. But things like Village Attacks which isn’t an campaign, it tells an epic fantasy or maybe horror story and adventure in one shot.

3. Marvel

Probably is my #1 to get me to look at it. And I could put down superheroes here, but it is really Marvel. I want to know when a Marvel game comes out so that I can check it out. Marvel theme is what got me into Unmatched. I play Marvel Champions, have Marvel Remix and Age of Heroes. But even with me loving Marvel, I still am picky. The Fantasy Flight Marvel game that used, kind of, Elder Signs mechanisms didn’t interest me. Or there is one about cleaning up after the heroes, Damage Control, I’d play it, but I’m not running out to try it.

2. Anime

This one hurts me to put on the list. I want great games around anime or even with just that anime/manga style to them. When a game comes out, I check it out, and I don’t buy almost all of them. It is an area that gets what feels like Hasbro level games made for it a lot of the time. Yes, there are exceptions to that rule, but the games aren’t as good and polished as they should be.

I say Hasbro, and that isn’t fair. It’s more that the rules consistently from the companies who make games with anime themes, aren’t as good or polished as they should be. And the games themselves are often more simple than they need to be. It feels like a minimal effort situation.

1. Horror

Finally, we have horror. I love horror, and I will say, horror is hard to get right in board games. So much of a good horror book or movie is the setting and feel that it creates. In a 30+ minute board game, that can be tricky to do. You don’t have a first chapter to lay out the setting. You can’t make jump scares. But I still want to find great horror games.

Campaigns, or grim dark work well for thise because you can build into it. Things like Oathsworn have horror type elements. Or Deep Madness and the Lovecraftian realm of games. But a lot of those don’t feel too scary. But then you have something like Night Cage which somehow gets the closest to creating a jump scare as you add tiles hoping not to flip a monster.

Final Thoughts

There are so many great themes out there, or great games that fall into those themes. I am going to do a list of my favorite game for each of the themes coming up here. It might take a week or so to get through it all, but expect one for each one of them.

And as I was doing this, I was thinking, there are other ones, like being a detective, cyberpunk, or nature that could easily make my list as well. Action movies would be up there too. I maybe could have done a top 10. But with the Top 5, it is specifically ones that I will stop and look at. Others I might gloss over more so.

What are some of your top themes for board games?

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What is Epic Fantasy?

Fantasy, we know what that is, it is wizards, magic, and probably set in the medieval times, not always but sometimes. Epic fantasy is really something that takes it up a notch from what you normally see. It is about that epic world saving quest and heroes who need to overcome so many odds thrown in front of them.

Think something like Lord of the Rings, where the fate is for all of Middle-Earth. Or Song of Ice and Fire where Westeros hangs in the balance. Generally these stories also create a grand world. They aren’t going to be the same as you’ve seen in a lot of other fantasy. They are going to build out their own thing that feels similar yet different.

What Do I Look For In Epic Fantasy?

1. Story
2. Interesting Main Characters
3. A Unique World
4. Good World Building

Story

I told you this was going to be number one. I want some sort of unique story, to some extent. Let’s face it, if you are going to be saving the world, you’re going to be saving the world. The event that is going to destroy the world can only be so unique. The differences need to come with how the characters are going to save the world, the composition of the group of characters, and the lore of the world itself. I don’t want the world to feel like you could drop Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table into it without a problem. We have a lot of stories like that already, let’s branch out some more.

Interesting Main Characters

Let’s face it, this is a common issue in writing, the main characters are boring. People saw the success of the Twilight movies and realized that if people feel like they are the main character, because Bella is dull and lousy in the movies, that they can create dull main characters and that is fine. Divergent series is a great example of a main character that has zero interest to them.

But I don’t want that. I can already imagine what it’s like to be in your world without having to be the main character. In fact, I’ll get bored with your series if the main character(s) isn’t interesting. I want character flaws for them to overcome. I want weaknesses and traits that are never actually dealt with. I want new flaws to start in the series and mistakes to be made. I don’t want a blank canvas of a character.

A Unique World

Like I said in story, I don’t want something generic. If you can make the story feel interesting in a world I already know and twist that world, that is great. But I don’t want it to be standard King Arthur. Tainted Grail, a board game – it always comes back to board games – does a good job of this. It is a grim dark take on King Arthur, the wyrdness isn’t something I’ve seen before. Menhir are new and unique and while I get the lady in the lake and Morgan Le Fey, it doesn’t feel normal.

Good World Building

How does this vary from a unique world. Isn’t a world that is created uniquely also one that is built well? Not really. Too often authors or movies will place all the world building at the beginning. Then I got to sit through 20 minutes or 5 chapters telling me about the world. Interlace the story as a whole with the story of your world. That is what I am looking for in storytelling. Unless your world is so unique that I need a separate book to understand it, I will have the general idea. So give me the unique information as I need to know it.

Are All Criteria Equally As Important?

No, a great story can make-up for basically anything. Let’s look at Lord of the Rings, the true main character isn’t actually super interesting. Frodo is just an okay character, Bilbo in the Hobbit is more interesting. Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gimli, Legolas, and Gandolf, they are all more interesting than Frodo. But JRR Tolkien tells a good story, he makes a good world, and he gives you information as you go. And he also, literally, has a separate book that is just world building, really, in the Silmarillion. So a great story can make everything else moot, but, if the story is just good, then everything else matters a whole lot more.

Let’s Do An Example

So, I am picking a series that I know I like already and have for quite a while, the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. But let’s talk through about what makes this epic fantasy work for me.

Story

The story is definitely strong. Sanderson blends high fantasy, epic fantasy, but also political intrigue. It takes some of what you expect from fantasy like Song of Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time, but really tightens it up. And I would say that Wheel of Time suffers from not getting that political intrigue right whereas Song of Ice and Fire suffers from not getting the epic fantasy right. So this one is really good for me when it comes to that combination.

Interesting Main Characters

The main characters are very interesting. I would say that the are four main characters in the story, though we see the story primarily through three of their eyes. And one of them, people assume that they are going mad, the other has been wrongfully turned into a slave, another is a spoiled brat, and the last one lies to get into the story in the first place. That’s not normal for fantasy characters or characters in books in general. So definitely unique characters who need to grow.

Unique World

The world itself, it is a bit unique. Sanderson does something very interesting with magic, that there isn’t much if any, but then the idea of spren. Basically little creatures or beings that are drawn to different things. It is something that is completely different than I’ve seen before. So while armies fighting amongst each other and people stabbing each other in the back for political gain are normal, the world as a whole is unique.

Good World Building

This is something that I think Brandon Sanderson accelerates at. His world is pretty unique but he fills in information on the world as you go. We get jumps back in time, we get legends that are talked about, but never is it four or five characters in a row. The information comes just as you need it or is shown in the world instead of us being told about it.

Will This Work For You?

Most likely, I think that these are good benchmarks in general for a lot of stories, whether they are epic fantasy or not. I do think that the world building piece, epic fantasy can often fall into that category where there is a lot of world to build, so they build it all at once.

What is your favorite epic fantasy story, whether it is in books, television or movies?

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The Games

So let’s dive into both of the games a little bit. This might actually come across a bit as my Board Game Battles, because, well, they are battling for my money as to which one I’ll back.

Chronicles of Drunagor

This game is on it’s second crowdfunding over on Gamefound. It previously was on Kickstarter and has met with a lot of love from those playing it. It is an epic dark dungeon crawl game. You fight monsters, race against the darkness and bust down doors. That then gives you more story and adventure that you fight through.

You level up your character as you go and unlock new skills. Chronicles of Drunagor has an interesting action system where you are playing out cubes to activate different things. When you pull them back, you are placing out a black cube which blocks off an action from you. So you need to figure out that puzzle to maximize your actions and then pull back blocking what you won’t need.

Chronicles of Drunagor is really going to be the pure dungeon crawler of the two. And I like that about it because while I do have a number of dungeon crawlers, I haven’t gotten something that is purely that recently.

Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread

Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, on the other hand, is going to have more that adventure feel to it. Yes, there is still tactical combat with monsters on a map, but it’s trying to be more of an RPG than Chronicles of Drunagor is. It really is going to have you going across the lands and finding quests, fighting monsters, and more.

You do get to level up your characters, and while these characters are more generic, some of how they work is more unique. The miniatures actually don’t come with a head on them, instead you get to pick the one to put on which gives the player more control over there. And I really like the inventory system. You are placing tiles onto a character board. Those spots are then the different spots monsters can attack.

This also has a very interesting exploration system. You see a lot of it at the world view level as you travel around. But then you can delve deeper into specific locations. And in those locations you can then delve into buildings as well. So it gets down to the point where you are dealing with people and have conversations but also backs way out from that.

The Price Point

So let’s compare the price point and what you get at each price point. Chronicles of Drunagor, for just the base game is going to be $115 plus shipping of $40. So that comes in around $155 for just the base game content which is a lot, more details to come, and compared to Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, that is $165 with $20 for shipping. So Chronicles of Drunagor is cheaper for the base game by $30.

But that’s clearly not all that’s in determining the value of a game. In fact, that’s going to be a topic that I talk about on Monday on Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. When looking at the two, Chronicles of Drunagor definitely has the edge in terms of minis. Arydia isn’t so much a minis focused game. The value there comes from other things. You get a ton of tiles to explore, and just tiles in general.

I would give the edge, however, to Chronicles of Drunagor. Especially since Chronicles of Drunagor is proven to have good resale value, but on the flip side, Chronicles of Drunagor also has way more that you can add onto it. While I say it’s around $155, that’s just for the base game, you could easily push that up to $300+. Assuming now addons, the max for Arydia is going to be $210.

What Draws Me To Them?

I don’t think it should be a surprise, but I love campaign games. Both of these games offer me that. What do I love about campaign games, I like the character progression, I like to figure out that puzzle of how to make my character better and tailor them to my style of play.

I really do think that both of them give a lot of opportunity for that. The question is which one does it better for me. Let’s look at a number of categories to see which one might be better for me.

• Theme
• Mechanics
• Characters
• Character Leveling
• Equipment
• Ease of Play
• Value
• Play Group

Theme

This seems like it should be a tie because they are both fantasy, but they are different types of fantasy. Chronicles of Drunagor is more of a grim dark fantasy setting versus Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread is more of an epic fantasy looking game. I like both types of fantasy but sometimes grim dark turns me off of a game. If the game looks like it’s grim dark for the sake of being edgy, I will call that out. However, I don’t think that Chronicles of Drunagor looks like that. It looks to me like the story is crafted to be grim dark for the sake of the story, not for the sake of being edgy.

Winner: Chronicles of Drunagor

Mechanics

This is going to be another really close one. I think I like the combat mechanics better in Chronicles of Drunagor. The puzzle aspect of how you use skills seems really interesting to me. I like the idea of losing some as you go along, it is actually a bunch like Gloomhaven that way where you’d lose cards as you rested. Here, when you pull stuff back you lose an ability for more of the crawl, or until you rest in a certain way.

On the flip side, while I think that puzzle is more interesting, I think that the exploring, while interesting in Chronicles of Drunagor is cooler in Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread. I like going from a tile to a grid map and then even into buildings. That has more of an RPG feel to it, which is another big difference. Arydia is much more of an RPG, and I love a good story element.

Winner: Slightest of Edges to Chronicles of Drunagor

Characters

The characters, while Arydia gives you more character diversity so you can pick what you want to look like more so, Chronicles of Drunagor seems to give you more diversity in the types (classes) of character you want to play. So I really, of course, like both of these again. But the ability to swap heads on minis in Arydia just so cool and something I haven’t seen before at all.

Winner: Slightest of Edges to Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread

Character Leveling

I’m going to stop saying that it’s close because honestly, I wouldn’t be thinking about it so hard if it wasn’t close. But both of these have cool character progression. You unlock more skills and abilities. But I think what will sway me on this is that Chronicles of Drunagor again has that puzzle aspect to it. Now, that said, I feel like I also have a better grasp on Chronicles of Drunagor’s leveling as compared to Arydia. And it does seem like with Arydia there is a lot that you can do to customize your character as well.

Winner: Chronicles of Drunagor

Equipment

This is one that isn’t close. Arydia, I think has the better equipment. Not because it is cooler, though I’m not super familiar with the Chronicles of Drunagor equipment, but because it’s used in multiple ways. Firstly, it is fun to draw it out of a treasure chest to see what you get. But also you are attacked towards certain pieces/areas of the body. So your gloves matter for defense on your hands. And that is not something I’ve really seen before. It makes equipment choices even more tactical as you play.

Winner: Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread

Ease of Play

A hard one to pick, not because they are close to being easy to get out to play. Both of these games look like they have a ton of stuff. I don’t think that either of them would be easy to set-up. Also, neither of theme seems like it’ll just be set-up at the start. I won’t know what locations I’m going to delve deeper into for Arydia. And I don’t know what’s behind the doors in Chronicles of Drunagor. That is something that you need to know about both games. Honestly, I don’t think there is a winner here.

Winner: Draw

Value

We’ve talked about value above with the price point. But it’s tough because Chronicles of Drunagor can get really expensive really fast. And value means more than that, which has more value in me getting it played? Do I have a larger group for one game or another one?

Price point wise for what I want from Chronicles of Drunagor, the base game and stretch goal box, plus the expansion, it’d cost more than Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread. And I really think that both are going to hold their value very well. Chronicles of Drunagor because there are a lot of people who are looking for it, and Arydia because there will be and it’s a known designer of Xia: Legeds of the Drift.

Winner: Chronicles of Drunagor (barely)

Play Group

Another close one, I have my campaign group and another person or two I could play a campaign with. My main campaign group I doubt I’d get to it for a while. We are doing Tainted Grail, we want to try Apocrypha, and we have Frosthaven coming. So there is no shortage of campaign games, plus I have Middara and more. Both of them, like I said in ease of play are going to be a lot for a lot of gamers. It has a ton going on. I think I might be more apt to get Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread to the table because it feel closer to an RPG.

Winner: Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread

So Which Will I Back?

Honestly, it’s really close. Looking at all the different categories I gave, Chronicles of Drunagor barely wins at 4-3 with one draw in there. I thin that I’m leaning towards Chronicles of Drunagor, even though it is slightly more expensive. It sounds like they are adding in more branching and developing story compared to what it originally had. If they weren’t doing that, I think that Arydia might have a better chance. For my style of gaming, I just think that the puzzle of Chronicles of Drunagor is more interesting. I have one day to decide though when Chronicles of Drunagor will have wrapped up.

Which would you back?

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In Dragonlance, you have a lot of stories and games that are going to be focused around the deities or dragons. Which is classic fantasy and classic Dungeons and Dragons. The deities are active in the world and are regularly fighting each other which of course is going to cause problems in the world that the adventurers are going to need to take care. The world where the characters join in is already going to be at the point where things have gone poorly and they are going to be fighting to bring things back to some level of good, or at least to keep the world from ending.

Dragonlance, being that it’s an earlier world doesn’t have the fully fleshed out set of races. While you’re going to have your classic races, Elves, Dwarves, and Humans, some of the other ones such as gnomes, halflings, tieflings, etc. aren’t going to be in this world. Much of this comes, again, from the time when this was created. Those other races were added onto Dungeons and Dragons at a later time. However, with that, because it’s been around so long, there are some well known NPC’s that you can interact with in the world. Raistlin is probably the most well known. He’s an extremely powerful mage, probably the most powerful in the land, so while he’s dealing with the bigger things, it would make sense then for the players to deal with smaller things that aren’t worth Raistlin’s notice.

So why would you play in this world? It’s fairly generic, and you don’t have the options that would be there in The Forgotten Realms which is also generic. I think that the reason you’d play here is that it’s going to have that grittier feel. If you wanted to play in a more generic settings but one that is darker and grittier, The Forgotten Realms is about being heroic, and while Dragonlance can have that feeling as well, it’s not going to be handed to you as much. Your characters will have to fight their way for it keeping track of everything. Now, that isn’t going to be for a lot of people. I would say that this is for the people who care more for the simulation piece of Dungeons and Dragons and a little bit less about the role playing piece. Not to say that you couldn’t play that more heroic style of game in Dragonlance, but what can set it apart is going less that direction and delving more into the darker and grittier side of fantasy.

As for the sort of games, it’s going to be the big epics. Eventually, your characters will be up there fighting with Raistlin against some deity or taking care of some dragon that he doesn’t have time for. It’s a world that is on the swords edge of falling into just complete war and chaos, which is what one of the gods wants, and the players will need to fight back those forces. You can do more stories in the world as well, but with the history and lore that is in place, that’s going to be a common style of game, is keeping Dragonlance and the lands of Krynn from falling into chaos and destruction that they can’t come back from. Again, leaning towards more of that fight for survival in a world that’s falling apart versus a grand heroic adventure.

So, would I play a game in Dragonlance? I’d play a game in any D&D setting, but I really don’t care to play in Dragonlance. Because it’s older, it would feel like an older setting with more constraints on what I can play and do. And this idea that it’s this darker and grittier world, just make something really bad happen in the Forgotten Realms or Eberron and you can gain that same survivalist feeling. So if I want this generic fantasy feel and to have that survival and darker setting, I can do that, I can even make it more unique in some other settings, so for me Dragonlance is a setting that’s had it’s moment and I really don’t care if I’d play in it.

Would you play or run a game in Dragonlance? Have you played a game in that setting before?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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The Forgotten Realms, also known as the lands of Faerun, is your standard fantasy setting in that it’s a world that’s made for the important people to be epic heroes in the end. The struggle for characters isn’t if they can become a hero, but what sort of hero they are going to become. It’s very much in the realm of a Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time, where there isn’t a question that they are going to become the heroes of the story or who those heroes are, but the question is how that story will unfold for them becoming a hero.

Now, if you’re reading this and that sounds great, that’s why it’s their main setting. It allows you to be that hero it allows you to play in tropes that you’re going to be very familiar with. People know Lord of the Rings or understand the concepts of that type of story telling because how it’s been integrated into society. And it is also nice because basically anything goes for a story. Just from what has been officially released from Dungeons and Dragons, you have adventures where you can fight dragons, demons, giants, pull a heist, defeat a god, and more. It is made to have something for everyone.

That’s also the weakness of it. It’s very generic because of that. You can’t but in an odd quirk about it if you’re going to have any sort of adventure there. As we get into some of the other worlds you can play in, in Dungeons and Dragons, you’ll find that they are more tailored for a specific style of game. Because this is more generic, it’s more versatile, but it’s always going to feel a little bit plain. I would refer to The Forgotten Realms as D&D’s starter world. It’s a good thing for that, but for people who have been steeped in fantasy for a long time, or in RPG’s for a long time, it’s going to feel a little bit too vanilla.

Let’s talk a little bit about what The Forgotten Realms has for people to explore. Again it’s fairly standard as well, you have a handful of nations, but then city states and towns scattered across the realm. Unlike a Star Wars planet, there is a diverse ecosystem that you can play your games in, again, giving you that massive variety of locations so that the world can support whatever type of game you want to play in it. A lot of the adventures are at least going to start from the Sword Coast and the main city there is going to be Waterdeep. Waterdeep does offer you some interesting things, basically masked lords who are running the city, but keeping their identities secret (or most are). If you want to play a more political and smaller game without characters wandering through the world, Waterdeep is where you’re likely going to set the game.

There are more things to talk about as we look at races and classes. Though, this is going to be fairly boring, again. Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition is set in The Forgotten Realms, that means that all the races and classes from the players handbook are going to work just fine in your game. If you want to play something more unique, there are options for those in some of the expanded content for the game, but you’re mainly going to see your standard races and standard classes in there. This, again, is going to be good for that starter setting for players who know some about fantasy but aren’t ready to jump into a fantasy where tropes don’t hold up and expectations are being subverted.

And, finally, just to talk about magic and the gods of this world. This is a pretty high magic world. While I’m going to get to worlds that have more magic, being a caster isn’t something that would be all that surprising. Especially with how the gods interact with the world. They are very much a part of it, and for that reason you have Clerics and Paladins who are going to be casting divine magic that you could see around the lands. There are Wizarding schools and plenty of beings who will be happy to make a pact with you. Again, it feels somewhat basic with their magic and gods. They want it to be normal so that players don’t have to feel like they need to play the outcast character if they are playing someone who is all about proselytizing or if they have magic.

So, to wrap up, The Forgotten Realms are a great starter location. It’s going to be a little bit bland, but it’s going to be familiar to even people who don’t know a ton about fantasy, because this is standard fantasy and parts of the world are even standard writing/story. Would I play a game in the Forgotten Realms, sure I would, though, I’d try to push it weirder than the setting would normally go to create a sort of unique feel to the game that makes it feel different than Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time.

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Forgotten Realms
This is a high fantasy setting where you’re going to see all the content (almost) from Wizards of the Coast coming out in. It’s your typical fantasy setting where Dwarves act like Dwarves and Elves act like Elves. This setting can be seen as a little bit vanilla in how standard it is, but it also makes it an amazing jumping off point for new players because it has a level of familiarity to it. The main cities in the Forgotten Realms are going to be Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate.

Eberron
Eberron is a very different setting than your typical fantasy setting. Magic is basically used as technology in this world. And it isn’t just a world where you have your standard races that you can play, there are shifters, changlings, and monstrous races that you can play as well. What also makes this setting unique is that the setting and call the adventures are set after this great war has ended when a country wiped off the map do to some cataclysm, but it’s never stated what it is, so it leaves it open for players and DM’s to decide for their campaign. The setting is very pulp and noir in it’s feel.

Ravenloft
Another different sort of setting where it’s less your standard fantasy setting and more focused on a Victorian Gothic setting. It is also going to be focused on a lower level of magic. The land is ruled by a vampire, Strahd, that is basically locked into the cursed land and most adventures set in Ravenloft are going to be about finding out Strahd’s history and then dealing with him. In 5th Edition the Curse of Strahd adventure pulls players from the Forgotten Realms and sticks them into this setting that is different than the world that they know and they are stuck there until they can defeat Strahd, if they ever leave.

Dragonlance
One of the first, if not the first D&D setting, Dragonlance is going to be another epic fantasy setting. The world is greatly influenced by the deities and a lot of the stories revolve around the good deities fighting the evil deities or the return of dragons after centuries of absence. It’s going to be much more in the standard version of fantasy and another good jumping off world that you could use to introduce Dungeons and Dragons.

Grey Hawk
As compared to the epic fantasy settings, Grey Hawk is more of a sword and sorcery setting. It is going to be darker and more dangerous for your characters. Magic is going to be less common than some settings. Grey Hawk is more of a world that is on it’s way out and the adventures that you might be more about keeping the world going versus bringing the world into a new great place which some Epic Fantasy stories can focus on more so.

Spelljammer
Now, if you want something completely different. Spelljammer is kind of a setting, but it can hit up most settings as you have magically powered space ships. This is going to be a game where you want to hop between a lot of worlds, have grand space exploration sort of adventures, versus a more traditional traveling adventure like Lord of the Rings. It really isn’t something that they’d call it’s own setting anymore, but it’s something that you could easily focus on to move between the worlds in your own campaign.

Dark Sun
This used to be a great world, but now, magic has defiled and the land and use of magic can make it even worse. And there is a god-like Sorcerer King who is ruling and can you stay out of their wrath or will they crush you and your party as you try to survive the harsh lands. Dark Sun is going to be a lower magic game that is much more focused on the survival throughout the lands and avoiding the halflings who are jungle cannibals. There are some new races that you can play in this setting as well and one of the biggest types of magic is psionics.

Birthright
If you want to play that extremely epic nation level game, Birthright is going to be the setting of you. In Birthright every player is going to be connected to a nation and have some sort of royal blood. These campaigns are going to be more about that nation ruling, epic wars, versus that smaller adventuring party. Birthright is a setting you’re going to have to come up with or tweak combat for to make it done at a bigger scale.

Planescape
This setting wraps several planes of existence into a single setting. It also takes it out of the normal medieval fantasy setting and puts it into a more Victorian and pseudo-steam punk world. There is a city of Sigil which is the home base for the players and is generally where you are going to be sending them out to the other planes to have their adventures and then returning back to Sigil to resupply, recover, and get new adventures.

Now, that’s just the start of Dungeons and Dragons settings. There are new ones being created as well as old ones that might come back. Most of these settings don’t have official books for fifth edition, but if you find older world setting books, you’d be able to turn them into something that you can use in 5e.

Do you have a favorite setting or is there a setting that you’ve really wanted to play in?

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Now, that could be less exciting, because there are a lot of generic themes out there, and a lot of games that are using themes over and over again. Especially now with copyrights not being extended to kingdom come, there are more works that are now public domain. A few years ago Sherlock Holmes became public domain and HP Lovecrafts work some time before that.

So what are some of my favorite themes on board games?

Epic Fantasy –
Super generic, but I really do enjoy a good fantasy game. Especially since a lot of them have a better developed story than most. Now it helps that I’m a big fantasy fan, so I can quickly understand what is going on with the various fantasy tropes and it allows me to get quickly into the story being told. Games like Gloomhaven and Legends of Andor do a good job of baking story into the actual game play themselves. I think what I like about the fantasy theme on board games is that it gives me a bit of that feeling of playing an RPG in a lot of the games and I can make my decisions like I am that hero. In a lot of ways it scratches my itch to play an RPG when I can’t be in a game as a player or as the GM.

Lovecraftian –
I did a big board game battle post about all of the Fantasy Flight games that I’ve played with the HP Lovecraft world theme on them. I’m a bit surprised with how main stream Lovecraft is in board games, but it works in most of the cases. I will say that it gets slapped onto a lot of games that don’t need it. Like in Unspeakable Words, you’re just doing a pretty standard word game, but it has the Lovecraftian theme and cute Lovecraftian artwork on it. Now, that’s fine because it takes a game that wouldn’t have artistic direction and gives it some, but it’s kind of silly. Then there are games like Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness, and Arkham Horror LCG that are just steeped in theme. Those games seek to make you feel like an investigator of some background who is really going through this world, dealing with the monsters, progressing the story, looking for clues, and sometimes dealing with the events of the normal world. It also does a good job of setting an aesthetic that is generally pleasing to play in but also being a horror focused game. It really doesn’t rely on blood and guts like some horror games would.

Sci-Fi –
Another super generic option, like epic fantasy, but I figured I should say more than just Star Wars. While the Star Wars games are great that I’ve played, Imperial Assault and Star Wars: Rebellion, there are other sci-fi games out there that I’ve liked as well. It’s interesting because you have a wide variety of scope with games in the Sci-Fi genre. Games like Star Wars: Rebellion, Battlestar Galactica, and Cosmic Encounters are planet level Sci-Fi games. And while Cosmic Encounters doesn’t feel like quire as grand a scope as Rebellion, it’s still a bigger game in some ways. Compare that to Imperial Assault and Clank! In! Space!, those games have a focus that is much more on a smaller part of the world. You’re on a planet or in a space ship dealing with things, but you aren’t as worried about the whole cosmos. Having that variety is what makes Sci-Fi such a strong genre to me.

Now, there are so many more genres out there, but you’re not going to have that much issue finding games in these genres, and I tend to gravitate towards them. There is one that I want to see more of though.

Weird West –
I really enjoy the weird west setting. Some might say that it’s a bit Lovecraft mixed with the wild west, and that’s probably pretty accurate. But when people say a Lovecraft game, that’s generally meaning 1920’s and Arkham area. Weird west can be a lot more than just that, and I like Shadows of Brimstone for that, though I’ve only gotten it to the table once. I need to go back and fix the monsters and hopefully stream that game at some point in time so I can actually play it some more. But the game is interesting and has some cool big moments to it.

Mythological –
Now, some might say this is part of fantasy, but I think I would qualify it differently than “Epic Fantasy”. Theming of games like Lords of Hellas, which I haven’t played or Santorini which is really an abstract game, but has the Greek mythology added to it, that’s a theme that I can get behind. What makes it generally pretty thematic is that all the deities have their own powers which really do track with the mythology that you’re in. Even if you aren’t going the standard Greek, there are now a lot of games with Norse Mythology. Blood Rage on the cards you draft does a really good job of creating that mythological feel for each deity that you can draft cards from. In fact, those cards are where you really get the theme of Norse Mythology in Blood Rage.

I could go on talking about more themes in board games. There are games with a heavily influenced theme by Japan and/or Anime. There are games t hat have cool adventuring themes that give you the Indiana Jones feel. There are a few themes that I’ll generally avoid though. If a game has the “trading in the Mediterranean” theme, that’s a hard pass for me. I’m also kind of done with the zombie theme at this point. I do like Dead of Winter, so I’m not opposed to it, but a zombie themed game isn’t all that interesting to me most of the time.

What are some themes you like in board games. What are themes that you want to see more of in board games?

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I think the biggest reason that there aren’t more of them is because publishers and writers want something that feels familiar. A writer can feel like it’s their own unique twist on something that is familiar and safe, and a publisher can look and see how well things have sold. Now there is plenty of variety within the standard epic fantasy that we often think of and that we see published most often, but there’s always some medieval feel to it that feels normal and allows us to jump into a world quickly and pick up the edge cases about the world that are different from others.

What are some of the tropes of fantasy that are used often?

While it’s less the case now, it often feels like fantasy is the clear good versus evil. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are both clear examples of this where there is clearly a good side and there is an evil side, and there really isn’t ground in between. Sometimes you really want that delineation, but fantasy can lean too much so into the good versus evil and it simply being that and nothing more.

Also there is the medieval feel, or what we attribute to a medieval feel. There are going to be knights most likely, though they might be called something else, a king, either good striving against the evil forces coming to the lands or evil keeping the people oppressed so a rebellion must rise up and there’s not all that much in between. Lots of castles, sprawling forests, and generally a lot of what you’d expect from Robin Hood shows up in your standard epic fantasy. Even in urban fantasy, there is often some leftover feel of the medieval period. In the Dresden Files, the wizarding council holds old traditions, in Harry Potter, Hogwarts is literally a giant castle.

Finally, while it’s not in all fantasy, there is very often some form of magic. This is often where fantasy diverges the most as different people use different things for magic. It could be that the magic comes from the divine, it could be that magic is steeped heavily in ritual and must be done at ritual locations, or it could be a quicker and dirtier magic that can be done on the fly. Magic can be fine and precise wielded like a scalpel or it can be swung around like a club, bludgeoning everything. So there’s plenty of leeway for magic, but it is something that is commonly found in fantasy.

That’s epic fantasy, is all fantasy like that or are there different types of fantasy?

While that might be the type that people think of when they think of fantasy thanks to Lord of the Rings, it certainly isn’t the only type of fantasy out there. There’s paranormal fantasy, urban fantasy, low fantasy, dark fantasy, or even steampunk would qualify as a different type of fantasy. Probably the biggest growing type of fantasy falls into that area of urban fantasy. The Dresden Files series is one of the biggest or Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman are two of the better known. But TV shows like Grimm also fall into that Urban Fantasy sub-genre of fantasy.

There are a few that I really want to call out, though, the first being Urban Fantasy. This is one of my favorite genres of fantasy as taking a modern world and putting magic not just into the world as a whole, but a densely populated area and really focusing the story down into that world can be done so well. In all of Neverwhere, Grimm, and The Dresden Files, there’s a grittier side of the world that you don’t a lot in fantasy. That grittier side of things is what sets it apart from contemporary fantasy which would qualify as something like Harry Potter where it’s in a modern setting, but doesn’t deal as directly with the modern nature of the world.

Another one can either be modern or not, but it’s a non-standard medieval fantasy. That’s a long name, but basically, it’s looking at fantasy that really goes outside of the normal sword and sorcery that you can see and takes us to another world or part of our world than London or the medieval European equivalent. An example of this is the Daughter of Smoke and Bones trilogy. Those books are set in Prague, so different location than normal, but they also deal with a very different subset fantasy with how they talk about a number of fantasy tropes, which you can see from above, and the creatures that you see. You don’t really have your standard goblins, trolls, and faeries. It’s often a bit jarring not to have your standard fantasy tropes, but it’s also refreshing to see fantasy step away from it’s roots and branch out into new areas.

Finally is a sub genre of fantasy that I want more from, and that’s the Weird West. But this can also fall somewhat into historical fantasy as well, so I’ll use that genre so I can talk about  more things. But in the Weird West genre, you’re getting something that we’re familiar with, because of westerns, and adding in some mix of magic, steampunk or advanced technology, aliens, or monsters. The movie, Wild Wild West is an example of what Weird West can be. But when you expand it to look at other parts of history, you see it around WWI and WWII, even something like Wonder Woman which falls under the umbrella of Superheroes, but the movie was as much an alternative history fantasy movie as it was a superhero movie because of Wonder Woman’s backstory and Ares being a Greek god.

Now, there’s so much more you can go with into fantasy. And a lot of what I’ve talked about with world building before for RPG’s or just in writing in general you can pull into fantasy as well and use it to help shape your thoughts around fantasy. I’m going to be doing a follow up article soon on magic and high, medium, and low magic as well as different ways of using magic that I touched on here in this post.

But I’ll leave you with the question, what are some of your favorite genres inside fantasy, and some of your favorite books or TV shows or movies in that genre?

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What do I mean by the title, Writing the Right Story? Does it mean that you could be writing the wrong story? Or is it simply a play on write and right (there’s a little bit of that)?

What I’m trying to get at with the title is that often as a writer, we are trying to write our best story. We’ll be very gung-ho about one idea and then start to get into it and we’ll realize that we have another great idea as well, and it might be better than the first idea. So we’ll drop one story and then hop onto writing the next one. Then after five years, we’ve realized that we haven’t finished any of the stories and we have twelve that are currently in progress and none of them over ten thousand words.

The struggle is very real, even in something like NaNoWriMo. I like my idea for a supernatural wild west story, but I don’t have it fully fleshed out, and I know that I have a high fantasy story that has been started twice already that I could start for NaNoWriMo. But that would be a bad plan. Writing the right story, in case, means that I need to continue with my supernatural wild west story and not let myself get distracted. I personally have enough half baked and half finished ideas, I could really actually stand to finish one of them, one of these days.

So how do you keep that from happening?

For NaNoWriMo, it’s pretty easy. I have a month to write 50k words on a single story. If I jump over to something else after writing nearly ten thousand words, I’m not going to be able to say that I completed it. I might hit the word goal, but it won’t really meat the spirit of NaNoWriMo.

But how about the rest of the time when I want to write?

There are a couple of things that I would recommend of this. I know that I’ve recommended one of them before already, but it’s very true for keeping on a single project.

Write on a Schedule: The reason for this one, and I kind of talked about it in a smaller sense for NaNoWriMo, is that writing on a schedule is going help you keep making progress. And it’s a whole lot easier to keep on a single story, if you keep on moving forward on it.

Keeping a schedule also means that you know things are going to end. If you keep writing on your first story idea, and you keep moving forward, you will eventually reach the end of that story, even that first draft. At that time, you’ll probably have a dozen ideas floating around in your head about what you want to write next. But it won’t feel like a case where you’ll never get to a new idea if you don’t hop onto it now.

Make it Accountable: How you want to do this is up to you, but here are a few different ideas.

Ask a friend to ask you about it. Now, there are some tricks to selecting a friend who can do that. Make sure it’s your friend who is the most persistent and who you really wouldn’t want to disappoint. Then when you get off schedule, you’ll be more apt to get back into you writing.

Find a writing group. This is probably harder, depending on where you live, but there are options online as well. Find a group of people that you can write with (or at the same time as). Again, they are going to hold you accountable, and you are going to have to be honest about what you do. But finding a writing group has an added advantage, if you can really buy into it, of keeping your motivation level higher. They are also going to be more apt to call you out if you jump from story to story.

Post your writing on a blog. This last one is probably the hardest to do, because you are showing a first draft of a story to the public, and you might have dreams of getting published. But if you can find a good venue to do so, you can create a story online that people are going to be reading. That is going to mean that you have people who are expecting the next part to come out. Maybe you serialize it in such a way that you can do a couple of passes of edits on it, but make a consistent schedule for it. And if you hop around projects doing it this way, people will notice.

One final bonus one, I could edit my previous thing, but that is dumb.

Get Rough Ideas Down: I said that if you finish one story, you will have a dozen other ideas floating around in your head. This is probably always going to be true. But you will  probably have some ideas that you really don’t want to lose, and you will lose ideas over time (sometimes in less than 24 hours from personal experience). So when you have a moment like that, jot down a rough idea of what you want to do. Oh, I have a great idea for my epic fantasy story, I can open up a google doc, a notebook, or jot a note on my phone, whatever it is for you, find a spot where you write down a rough idea of a story. It can be as simple as, “Secret society of cats trying to save the world.” I think we all could come up with a story around that, and that might be enough to jog your memory to what your story was going to be about again. But figure out the level of detail that you need to put down, but limit it as well. This doesn’t mean that you write out your first chapter that you have a great idea for. It means that you write down four bullet points so later you can write that first chapter just the way you remember it, once you’ve finished your previous projects.

Do you have projects you want to get back to?

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