Personally I’m really obsessed with the lore in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
serious answer: Discworld. every storyline starts out completely separate but through the years they wove together into a world rushing headlong into a new age.
shitpost answer: ace attorney. eat your hamburgers, Apollo.
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.
The Expanse.
I love the idea of sovereign nations Earth and Mars, and the political conflicts of not just diferent people, but different people living in different atmospheres, unlike different nations on earth, the difference between a Earther’s and Martian’s live is so different: Gravity, Breathable Atmosphere, the Ocean.
Also there are people that live outside of the planets in space stations that have never experienced a planet’s gravity and their bodies and unable to survive on planets. The story expands to other star systems.
Its originally a book series but it has been adapted into TV, although they canceled the TV series before it was finished :(
But still worth a watch tho, the politics is more fun than irl politics.
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.
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.
LotR - it’s really fucking hard to top especially when Tolkien was pioneering the field.
Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi by Ryouko Kui.
It has wonderful world building introducing it slowly over time without info dumping, or better said, there is a nerd in the world info dumping on his friends, who don’t always appreciate it =D
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.
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.
Most recently, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, had great world building and character development.
On Cinema at the Cinema.
Where my Gregg heads at?
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.
You know, I’ve always liked the Avatar:TLA’s worldbuilding
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/
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?
