Currently published fantasy valley settings?

I was just wondering if there were any currently published fantasy settings.

Settings similar to what I'm looking for:

1. Haunted Highlands (Castles & Crusades). I like large parts of this setting, but it's certainly not perfect. I'd have preferred more stuff like the first couple books, and less on a big war against the orcs.

2. Nentir Vale. WotC really dropped the ball with this. A fully-fledged campaign box or hardback would have been great.

3. Griffin Island (Runequest). Good stuff, but I prefer more medieval settings.

4. Thunder Rift (D&D). This was pretty good, but also had some silly stuff like ninja rakasta.

Demon city

I recently rewatched the anime Demon City Shinjuku. It gave me an idea. Have the biggest city in your setting have a demon gate open in it. The demons take over part of the city, turning it into a literal hell on earth.

For a fantasy city, I'd think the local mages find some way to use the walls around that particular neighborhood to contain the demon outbreak. The demons can't get out, but entering the area is a death sentence.

Maybe the local government uses this as a way to execute criminals. Maybe heroes come from everywhere and attempt to seal the gate. Sneaky demons may actually get over the walls and corrupt the rest of the city. The sorcerer who initially opened the gate may be dead, or he may have become incredibly powerful, but with his death, the gate might close.

Holy Day of a God of Peace

Just a fun idea I had for the Holy Day of a God of Peace.

Any army that initiates a battle on the Holy Day will lose, badly. Troops will be slaughtered, generals will die, and everything that might go wrong will go wrong for the attacking army. If a general plans an attack on that day, including trying to cheat by starting it the night before, something odd like having his horse fall on him, a random arrow hitting him in the eye, etc, WILL happen. This includes a king who tries to force his general to attack, against the generals wishes.

Basically, the God of Peace will have peace on his holy day, or he will kill off any army that tries to break it.

Pilots vs. the Necromancer

This is a fantastic Setting Idea. Really wish I'd thought of it.

Post-apocalyptic world where the Necromancer controls armies of undead. The heroes are pilots who fly WWI biplanes, and are regarded as knights or paladins. Highly recommend you check this out!!!

Dwimmermount in hand

I was one of the Kickstarters for Dwimmermount. I finally have the hardback, map book, and image book in hand. I like them a lot. It was a very long, turbulent process, but the final product is actually quite good. I can easily run a campaign for years with this book.
Parts of the dungeon are fairly standard, which is a good thing. But it also has a lot of pseudo-science/technomagic bits which work quite well.
The background is cool, and there are different groups of monsters in the dungeon, and their relationships are mapped. Some work together, others hate each other. If the players are smart, they could easily gain allies to help them.
The art if very old school in style. The book is big, and looks like it will take a lot of punishment.
Overall, I'm glad it is finally here. The final product looks to be very usable, and well thought out. Congrats to everyone involved in finally getting this setting into print!

Bushi d6- Miyako and Gojo Cities

Miyako is the Imperial Capitol. It was formerly named Honzu, until Hunzu Shuzo became the First Emperor and renamed it. The Imperial Palace dominates the southern half of the city. A large naval and trade dock district fills the western half of the city. The rest of the city consists of residential and commercial areas. 

The city is currently just starting to rebuild, following the oni attack that destroyed large parts of the Palace and surrounding neighborhoods. Some oni and bakemono are still hiding in the city, preying on the residents.  

Gojo is a heavily fortified city. A large fortress sits on the northern end of the city, with a cliff down to the sea dominating its western side. Walls surround the city. There are large residential and merchant areas, but it is immediately obvious that the entire city is geared towards supporting an army. Many Imperial Troops use this city as their home base. 

Daimyo Gojo Shun spent much of his time fighting the oni before the civil war erupted. He was a stout supporter of Emperor Honzu Ryoto, and has actually put his backing behind Honzu Tetsu in a vain effort to repair the Empire quickly, as he believes the attack by Wu Jiao was only the first of several planned assaults by some power hidden within Onizan.  

Gojo has a long-standing rivalry with the Takashi Family, and that rivalry has now caused the current rift in the Empire. Gojo would prefer to concentrate on the oni, but if necessary, he will gladly use his armies to crush his Takashi foes.

Expanding empires

One thing I've noticed in most rpg settings is a lack of dynamic, expanding empires. Usually, when empires exist, they are in decline. Yeah, this gives a great reason for ruins and old magic, but I would love to see either a revived empire, or a newly-formed one, expanding and taking over the place.

Heck, if the players work for the empire, part of their job could be to explore and clear old ruins and claim them. They could be members of the army, or just special agents out to discover and utilize magic to help the empire in its quest for expansion.

This also allows players to fight against the new empire, which might be utilizing either new magic or new technology, which is why it is expanding.

All of the gods had been mortal

It would be cool if there was a world where all of the gods had been mortal at one point, and anyone alive today had a chance to become one. You just had to become powerful enough to force yourself into the pantheon. BECMI D&D certainly allowed a way for this to happen, but precious few games since have done it.

Of course, some of the existing gods would likely make a point of stomping out any potential competitors, but even they can fail. If their champion gets stomped by an ascending hero, it just might be his destiny to become a god, no matter who opposes him.

This would give long-term campaigns a great goal and even better, provide a perfect finale to a campaign, with the final game night being one or more players achieving godhood.

Arena World

Just an idea I had, since I've been playing League of Legends. How about a world that has dedicated arenas, with champions fighting each other? Have the game actually designed for it, too. I'm thinking something similar to d6 or the Supers! rpg would work well. Heck, this is one area I think 4e D&D would actually shine. I'm not sure old school D&D would do as well.

Instead of having monsters, it's just NPC Champions to fight. Team vs. Team, or even One vs. One. Heck, powerful monsters would be champs, but actually written up with a name and history.

This would also allow different arenas. Maybe one is all ice, with big chunks of snow and clear ice sheets that block ranged attacks. Another could be a jungle, and then just a flat plain for some matches.

Portents affecting a campaign

Does anyone have some massive portent appear in a campaign? Maybe one night, a big-ass green comet appears in the sky. The GM just mentions it.

The next game, he mentions it again. This continues, with maybe local NPC mages and priests getting real worked up and even hiring the players to obtain some lost magic item that will be needed as the comet reaches its apex.

Or maybe some big bad will take the comet as the sign that he needs to destroy the players homeland RIGHT NOW, so they get sucked into a war.

Elementals as Nature Spirits

I think one could way to make your setting more unique is to have some elementals actually living in the world. They would be nature spirits, and might even be worshipped by local tribes. I'd give them more intelligence than your typical summoned elemental, of course, so that players could interact with them.

This was done in Exalted and Avatar: The Last Airbender (and a bunch of Eastern myths), but I don't know that it's been included as part of a vanilla European fantasy setting. I think it would be a cool variant, even if it's only in one area of the map.

Only humans and one other sentient race

I think it would be interesting to have a world with only humans and one other sentient race. The humans would be dominant, but they would have to worry about the other race. Maybe it's orcs or beastmen. Even better, skaven would happily take over the sewers of human cities. Even just having elves would be cool.

Of course, there would still be monsters. Something like owlbears and griffons would still be around, but only as strong animals. Even some "smart" monsters could be made to have animal intelligence, especially ones like the minotaur. Or have intelligent minotaurs as the rulers of the beastmen.

Favorite area for adventuring

It's a toss-up for me. I really like the idea of a new colony in a New World, with lots of wilderness and monsters. This allows you to do all kinds of fun stuff, especially if the settlers are from a large Empire that contains multiple cultures.

Another idea would be an Italian city-states style area. Multiple large city-states that are fairly close together, with roaming armies (including mercenary companies), and maybe an old ruin that just happens to be inhabited by ghosts or other monsters.

I'd also be interested in a Napoleonic setting, in an out of the way location, with patrols of both sides in the area. There would be some kind of local antagonist or monster to deal with, as well.

Exalted-Style D&D

I'm kind of surprised no one has done a demi-god level OSR clone. I personally LOVE Creation as presented in Exalted 1e. I really wish a legal hack of it to D&D could be published. The hard part would be making it relatively rules-lite, similar to BFRPG, but I think it could be done.

Have the "classes" actually be the Caste. You wouldn't be a Fighter, you'd be a Dawn Caste. I'd add in Feats of some kind. Nothing too crazy, but one special ability every few levels would be fine.

Starting hit points, number of attacks, etc., would all be equal to level 10 or so. Yes, the character would plow through your typical goblin mob, but that's the point. They'd be far more interested in finding the local big bad and taking him down, than wasting time killing a few bandits. Then again, if they wanted to kill the local bandits, they'd do it in an hour or so.

The hardest part would be keeping the game interesting, but the same problem exists with normal high-level D&D. Starting there would be ok, by me.

(Hmm, one idea would be using the high-level character creation rules from the Companion rules).

Wanted: Fantasy Rifts

No, not the Palladium Fantasy game, which I have and love. But something more like an OSR game. All wizards and fighters and thieves and such. Maybe have the various fantasy races (elves, goblins, etc) all coming from Rifts. Some are helpful, some are evil. Splugorth can still hang out as one of the big bads, though. They are a fantastic race.

It's kind of surprising someone hasn't done this. It would be hard to have the same feel without robots and cyborgs and other hi-tech stuff, but I think it would be doable. More ruins, less standard fantasy areas.

Actually, having one or two races using golems extensively (similar to the Asura in Guild Wars 2) would be kind of cool, but keep it limited to them. Not everyone should have one.

Rifts rpg

I wish there was a big worldbook for Rifts, but with no stats in it. Just lots of text and lots of cool art. Keep the era near the beginning of the setting, before all the Tolkien metaplot garbage. I'd buy this book in a second.

I used to really like the Palladium system, as it was obviously based upon AD&D, but with guns and robots and magic and psychics and tons and tons of awesome stuff. It really is my favorite published setting (except for maybe gray box Forgotten Realms). It's a shame the rules are so mediocre (they are not horrible, but they are not great).

A book without rules baggage would be great, and I suspect it would be a good seller for Palladium. Sadly, I don't think Siembieda would ever consider it, as he really does believe his system is the best.

Fantasy races as aliens

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 a lot, and two of the player races are aliens who actually crash-landed on the planet. I think this is an awesome idea.

The Charr have a giant globe spaceship as their home city. They are big, cat-like beings with horns. They are very tough, and value strength over other attributes. They are constantly in a state of war, from what I can see.

The Asura are little floppy guys, who value intellect above all. They have a lot of golems, and golemancers are incredibly influential. They work together in krewes, and are far more concerned with Science (pulp science, at that), than marching off to war. Their home city is a giant cube, also a spaceship.

Charr:

Asura:

Players as colonists

One setting I think never gets enough attention for fantasy is the brand-spanking new colony. The players are right off the ships. There is a small town and some docks. Go ten miles inland, and it's largely unmapped wilderness filled with savages.

This also allows the players to have a variety of backgrounds. Maybe they came from a cosmopolitan Empire. Maybe it's just a bunch of prisoners dumped off at a work camp (in preparation for the "real" colonists). Maybe one of the players is a friendly native.

Another twist would be that the natives are goblins or elves, and the colonists are humans and dwarves and halflings. Or some other mix.

It would also be cool if the new territory had once been a powerful empire, but was wiped out for some reason. The current occupants are the barbaric remnants of this empire, and at least a few of their old cities lie in ruins not that far distant from the colonists.

Low Magic Worlds - a twist

One of the things I've noticed about many fantasy settings is that they attempt to be low magic. Pretty much all of them achieve this by having the peasants hate and fear magic, and run around pitchforking mages. A growing subset actually makes magic inherently evil, granted by demons or cthuloids, which actually makes the angry peasant mobs make sense.

I'd like to see a low magic world but one where magic is celebrated. Powerful mages are the Hollywood celebrities of their era. They have fan-bases, and if they get into a big battle or magical duel, it's "televised" magically, and the mages involved get a cut of the proceeds.

Of course, magic is still rare. You have to find and read ancient, often encrypted, texts, which can be incredibly valuable. You also have to have the ability to cast spells. Many wannabes have read multiple tomes, practicing daily, yet couldn't even light a candle. Some marvels read a spell and can immediately turn invisible. It's kind of random. You just have to have the gift.

Of course, more than a few people are willing to fake it. They have elaborate stage set-ups, and perform phony "duels" with other charlatans, and reap in the profits. Their biggest worry is being challenged by a real mage.

Malazan stuff I'd love to see in an rpg

I've been reading the Malazan series by Steven Erikson and there is just a ton of stuff in it I'd love to see in a published campaign world. Fact is, Malazan is based on a D&D/Gurps campaign, so that probably really adds to this feeling.

Anyways, stuff I'd love:
1. Soletaken. Powerful shapechangers that are generally resistant to magic and many of whom are mages. Some of them are dragons, others turn into a horde of rats. All of them are vicious, nasty bastards.
2. Warrens. Magic is aspected to warrens. Many mages can only access one warren, though cases certainly exist where mages can use a bunch of different ones (Quick Ben and Bottle being the primary examples).
3. Ancient races that are still around, though very rare and generally extremely powerful. Examples include the Toblakai, the Jaghut, and the Tiste variants. This would also work fine with elves if they were not just the tree-hugging recluses most settings use that mid-level adventurers can kill without a ton of effort.
4. A real live Empire that includes multiple cultures and is generally quite effective at accomplishing it's goals. Most settings either have the empires long vanished or generally collapsing (Forgotten Realms is a prime example).