The Future of the World?

[Morkilus]

Tortanick said:
Has the "time of man" ever come to an end in fantasy books? I'd love to see how writers do that.

Actually why is the "time of man" so common? pure mankind is rather boreing, and unrealistic, its hard to see how mankind would dominate many of the other fantasy races especially in dominions where there is such a large veriaty. I'd bet on R'lyeh

I would make that bet too... but you might have to consider Lovecraft to be a science fiction writer instead of someone using mythology conventions. In that case, Mankind always loses.

I would guess the "Golden Age -> Iron Age" trend is more interesting because we would like to think of fantastic things as something that might have actually happened ages ago. Consider the Conan mythology, where he used a Europe that might have existed thousands of years ago. It's more fun to think about Conan and crew running around our real, though distant world rather than some goofy place like Faerun or Krynn.

Speaking of which... who wants to play on a Hyborean Age map? Maybe I'll mod the Enigma of Steel heroes. Conan probably wouldn't play well with your pretender though:

Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you!

[Tortanick]

Makes sense but I would have thought that a wider veriaty of fantastic beasts running around a mythical world would easily be more fun than having to give them up just to use earth.

[Agrajag]

Humans are the cockroaches of fantasy worlds.
Constantly breeding and ever adaptive, they use sheer tenacity and stupidity to overwhelm the opposition.

Sure as heck we do! In fact, in most fantasy settings i have to constantly wonder why humans *don't* dominate everyone else, (say, in the ever-popular Forgotten Realms) Dominions is actually a nice exception to the rule. Ok, the complete undead are out since they kind of obviously win in any fantasy setting but other than that, there are still races that should outcompete humans in the dominions world. C'tis is a likely candidate, due to sheer population volume. (Laying eggs really is more efficient to produce cannon fod.., uh, offspring) But R'lyeh also look good.
Standars elves as seen in a hundred fantasy settings? Pshaw, living a few hundred years while still maintainting a constant population size means a birthrate far too low to compensate even for a single major war.