/lit/ - Literature

Why didn't they just dig a tunnel into Mordor?

>>21047896
what part of europe is this shit in then

What was the first fictional world that didn't bear any relation to the real world?
When you look at fiction pre-Tolkien, no matter how fantastical the story is, it's always either on earth, or on a place you can get to from earth, or in the Earth's past. But modern fantasy often takes place entirely in constructed worlds.
I'm asking mostly because I'm trying to develop a theory for why no one developed role playing games prior to the 70s, despite the technology existing for thousands of years. My idea is that genre fiction explicitly based on non-real places and things gave people the media literacy to conceptualize "secondary realities" as narratively meaningful in a way they weren't able to do prior to, as far as I can tell, the mass popularity of Tolkien.
>inb4 arda is ancient earth
That idea never made it out of his letters

Name a comfier/richer setting.

A fantasy book isn't good unless it has a map. What's the best fantasy map?