Setting Aesthetics

Worldbuilding can be hard. If you're creating a story that isn't already set on Earth at some point in history, you'll have to come up with a lot of different things on your own. And not just the names of places and what transpired, or what kind of culture each different people has, but also the more subtle parts of a setting that include tone and visual aesthetics.

That's why a lot of fictional worlds tend to cleave to a particular setting aesthetic, an amalgamation of different ideas that can loosely be thought of as setting genres. These are not hard and fast rules, as some different aesthetics may blend into one another, but they tend to stick primarily to one type of aesthetic. These terms can be applied across literature, movies, games, etc.

Fantasy

• High Fantasy - the default type of setting for Dungeons and Dragons, and its many derivatives. Magic is commonplace, as is anything we normally associate with fairy tales and mythology. High Fantasy tends to be a bit more upbeat, as many civilizations tend to exist quite comfortably (apart from the odd dragon or zombie attack).

Examples: Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons

• Low Fantasy - the dark and gritty counterpart to High Fantasy. Not necessarily Grimdark, although life does tend to be harsher. The biggest exemplar of Low Fantasy is Conan the Barbarian; magic is uncommon but very powerful, political strife is more commonplace, and violence is the norm.

Examples: Conan the Barbarian, Game of Thrones

Sci-Fi

• Cyberpunk - The original of the "punk" genres. If you've ever seen The Matrix, that's pretty much Cyberpunk in a nutshell. Dystopian urban environments and highly advanced technology is commonplace, as are dark, brooding heroes wearing black trench coats.

Examples: The Matrix, Cyberpunk 2020

• Steampunk - One of the first derivatives of Cyberpunk, at least in name only. In actuality, the aesthetic draws quite a bit from the works of Jules Verne, which takes place in Victorian times and features more advanced versions of the steam-powered technology of the day.

Examples: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Warmachine

• Dieselpunk - A darker and grittier version of Steampunk set between the World Wars. Tyranny and warfare is commonplace, as are machines capable of deadly efficiency.

Examples: Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Bioshock

• Atompunk - The name applied to anything inspired by the science fiction of the 1950s and early 1960s. Space exploration is the norm, and technology is mostly based on what was slowly beginning to emerge at the time that we would now take for granted (such as video chat, portable phones, robots capable of walking) or else has proven to be wildly impractical if not impossible (Jetpacks, flying cars, ray guns, robots capable of independent thought).

Examples: Buck Rogers, Fallout

Other

• Lovecraftian: A type of horror setting that is either directly based on or inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, especially the Cthulhu Mythos. The main concepts revolve around monsters and deities whose mere existence is so horrible that knowledge or direct perception of them drives people insane, and feature copious amounts of existential dread.

Example: Call of Cthulhu

• Cattlepunk: What sets this apart from Westerns is that the setting is entirely fictional, or else is a hybrid of another setting.

Example: The Dark Tower