Recommendations established universes that don't mess with the canon.

not really into the "futuristic" settings, but it's not a complete deal breaker. seems like they might meet a fair amount of the other things i'm looking for. still early and i'm far too tired to concentrate and read all that much. think i'll head back to sleep and read a bit more, later.

 

just tried starting "the swarm of war" and i'm not sure what you're talking about. The mc's reaction to everything makes no sense and i already stopped reading it after one chapter

 

well, haven't found anything i like just yet. i did manage to figure out the ideal settings to shorten the lists down to a workable size, but that's probably not all that impressive. i was rather amazed at how many went *poof* when removing the romance genre instead of something like the main characters, though.

if i find something interesting, in the near future, i'll mention it here. if you guys don't hear back from me, it means the grammar, spelling, and/or plot for something was so bad that i became incapable of remembering how to use a computer, my phone, or anything even slightly more advanced than sleeping.

 

oh yea i wanted to ask if you consider a world that works with D&D rules as fitting what you want.
i mean, there isn't a story that it follows but it "follows the rules of the realm" as you asked

 

i suppose the appropriate answer for that would be "so long as it doesn't use 4e", but disregarding that... it's close to a no (for this particular request) as, aside from creatures, stats, skills, spells, and such, there isn't exactly a world that's pre-sculpted for it (as you also pointed out). however, that is the right direction. a great number of games, novels, and such were all based on the groundwork D&D set up, such as everquest, warcraft, the elder scrolls, baldur's gate, and so on. the greater emphasis should be on an OC using those sorts of details at play in the world rather than all the main/famous characters running around in it.


edit: currently got 30 things i'm plannin to check sometime tomorrow, time allowing. i'll whittle it down and post my results if i find anything actually interesting.

 

well, that was disappointing. couldn't sleep, so i decided to do a slightly deeper examination of the things i had marked to look at later and dropped it down to 10.5 (i think one's a sequel). had some hope for a couple things, as their source was rather adventurey to begin with, but ended up cutting most of 'em out because for things like overly quick growth (reaching the highest stage/evolution within 20 chapters) or meeting/joining up with people/things that really should never have happened. "completed at 30 chapters" and well under 100k words is just an insult to a proper story. that's maybe an arc or two, at best.

i'm kind of amazed at what's considered long for these fanfics and really don't hold much hope for the ones i have left to look at.

 

and i've crossed off everything i found... a number of 'em look like they've been dropped or are lucky to get a short update once a month, one seems like it had intended to have sequels but never actually did it. most of the others had a massive problem with getting too powerful far to quickly to rush the story, with the final one lacking a proper grasp of little more than the basics (what things are called) of the world around them and everything else was just painful.

so, i think i'll give up on my hunt through fanfictions. it's just got nothin' for me.