In other words, a dice roll does not only tell a story, it *is* a story.

One more reason to love digital games that put their rolls front and center: BG3, Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper.

Unexpected but quite interesting!
If you need any help with research/sources, I volunteer!

Character design. It conveyed such a strong fantasy appeal, in both meanings of the word, that I not only bought the game just based on it, but rolled the credits. All other elements were good, but character design tied them all together and elevated beyond their level.

Citizen Sleeper 2

It's a vague and subjective criteria, but if you have any recommendations of such settings, please share!

It's hard to pin down, but I guess that I value internal cohesion more than any individual element. Being too original or and overly relying on tropes for me is essentially the same thing — prioritizing external factors over the internal logic of the world.

At the same time, I'm not a particular fan of Faerun or Garalon. Not sure why. They just seem to be not very coherent, too eclectic, a bit too tropey.
What I like is Thedas and specifically Ferelden in Dragon Age: Origins. Or Elysium in Disco Elysium. I loved the worlds in Banner Saga or Dishonored.