Skies of Arcadia.

For one thing, the entire setting is just a bunch of floating islands, and I love that trope.

For another, there’s 6 moons, each with elemental powers. The land under each moon is affected by these powers, making the land under the red moon a scorching desert, and the land under the green moon a thick jungle.

Then there’s the subtle mysteries. There’s an iron star in the atmosphere, which is a satalite but everyone forgot what it’s called. There’s a black moonstone, but no black moon to go with it. There’s a looper of every moon colour, but there’s also a black looper that only shows up once you defeat the main villain.

I think, most of all, I love the tone. Pirates fight an evil empire, and a heroic, upbeat attitude is never punished.

Hogwarts.

A huge castle where you can learn magic, explore and live adventures with your friends? There’s a reason there was so much success for that saga.

JKR is a horrible person, but that universe is still there for people to create and share stories. There are a few fanfictions out there that are better than the last books.

[email protected] for people interested in that universe.

Star Wars, specifically the universe created by the EU from 1991 to 1999. It was a wide open wild west of ideas. The details of the clone wars hadn’t been established, Anakin Skywalker as the chosen one didn’t exist, and there was just such a massive variety of content.

This is one of my favourites.

Academy City (Magical Index) It’s set a bit into the future with elaborate world building. Most people have esper abilities or are capable of learning magic. The characters are well thought out. Ironically the least impressive character is the main character.

I’d love to be one of the other characters and get to live and explore that world.

Shadowrun. It’s horrific and dehumanizing and dated. But it’s perfect.

I think the halo lore is pretty neat (except for everything the TV show and 343 touched)

Star Trek’s depiction of the late-24th century. The height of the Federation, with nearly-ubiquitous post-scarcity democratic socialism, where anyone can do what they want, unburdened by having to work just to survive. But if you do work, you have the freedom to pursue anything, anywhere.

Iain M. Banks’s Culture series—the prototypical example of “Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism”.

I enjoy Creative writing

My favorite is Middle Earth, but my 2nd choice would be the Dresden Files. Everything from Chicago to the Feywild to Vampire parties to the realms of the dead.

I really like the world of Horizon zero dawn and forbidden west. All the ruins from buildings we can recognize (and some we cannot) are really cool. I also like how humanity had to start again without all the knowledge that was lost in the Apollo purge and how they had to adapt to a world shaped by the AI called Gaia and her robots.

As challenging as it would be, the Fallout universe.

Don’t know why. I just feel like in the Fallout universe, you can be anything you want to be as long as you can convince enough people to back you up. Those same people might eventually stab you in the back, but still…vigilance is a small price to have the freedom to climb from a nobody stumble-bum to a czar of your own city-state.

Warhammer 40k, pre 8th edition. It’s a massively deep setting full of stories that are told by unreliable narrators.

The Fugue from Weaveworld. Something about a magical world, hidden in the intricacies of something as seemingly mundane as a rug.

The Cosmere

Different worlds with hard-ish magic systems that are different. Yet each is a manifestation of the same underlying forces/rules across the Cosmere.

Whether it’s Stormlight, Ferruchemy, Metallurgy, etc. they’re all aspects of investiture.

Which means you get unique stories and challenges in the worlds but you also get the occasional cross of characters with one set of magic in another world of the Cosmere that has another.

And my personal favorite in the Cosmere is the Wax and Wayne series of Mistborn (books 3-7) where you have metal based magic in a Wild West like setting. So people who can manipulate metal using bullets from pistols in unique ways. Imagine all those fantasy novels with wizards… but centuries later as technology advances to the age of steam engine and firearms.

An excerpt from one of those books

Smoke curled in the air over the bandit boss’s pistol.

“Oh . . .” Wayne said softly. “You just made a bad mistake, mate. A very bad mistake.”

The boss turned away from the body, holstering his gun. “Fine,” he yelled, walking toward the door. “You can have some fun, boys. Burn it out of your blood quickly and meet me outside. Let’s—”

Everything froze. People stopped in place. The curling smoke hung motionless. Voices quieted. Whimpering halted. In a circle around Waxillium’s table, the air rippled just faintly.

Wayne stood up, shouldering his dueling canes, inspecting the room. He was placing each and every one of the bandits, Waxillium knew. Judging distances, preparing himself.

“As soon as I drop the bubble,” Wayne said, “this place is going to erupt like an ammunition store in a volcano.”

Waxillium calmly reached into his jacket and slid a hidden pistol from beneath his arm. He set it on the table. His twitch had vanished.

“Well?” Wayne asked.

“That’s a terrible metaphor. How would an ammunition store get into a volcano?”

“I don’t know. Look, are you going to fight or not?”

“I’ve tried waiting,” Waxillium said. “I gave them a chance to leave. I tried giving this up.”

“You gave it a good show, Wax.” He grimaced. “Too good a show.”

Waxillium rested his hand on the pistol. Then he picked it up. “So be it.” With his other hand, he poured out his entire pouch of steel into his wine cup, then downed it.

Wayne grinned. “You owe me a pint for lying to me, by the way.”

“Lying?”

“You said you hadn’t brought a gun.”

“I didn’t bring a gun,” Waxillium said, reaching to the small of his back and sliding a second pistol out. “You know me better than that, Wayne. I never go anywhere with only one. How much bendalloy do you have?”

“Not as much as I’d like. The stuff’s damn expensive here in town. I’ve got maybe enough for five minutes’ extra time. My metalminds are pretty much full, though. Spent a good two weeks sick in bed after you left.” That would give Wayne some healing power, should he get shot.

Waxillium took a deep breath; the coldness inside him melted away and became a flame as he burned steel that pinpointed each and every source of metal in the room.

For anybody interested in starting with a book that is in the Cosmere “Mistborn: The Final Empire” is a great starting point.