: Re: Building a Fictional World upon a Real Setting To save time with world building an focus on the tale, is it justified to borrow heavily from a real world setting and take enough liberties

@Murphy332

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This type of borrowing is done all the time. In regular fiction, the setting is still a "real" world, only it is borrowed from some some other place (or places) on Earth, with necessary renaming. In fantasy, the fictionalized world is often borrowed from some real historic setting, like medieval England, sometimes with a great level of detail.
There are three possible issues with that:

Trademarks. While borrowing from real world, the writer can (usually inadvertently) use some names that are trademarked;
Libel. Some real life people and businesses can be offended by their portrayal;
Hate/apologism. When borrowing from a real world setting, some real world issues like genocide and slavery may find their way into author's work. Portrayal of these issues might be offensive to a number of people.

While the first two issues may result in a specific legal action, they are unlikely to lead to any consequences. The third issue may not lead to any legal action, but it has the greatest potential to sink the book.

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