Are there any fantasy out there that doesn't have any larger implications attached to it? Meaning there's no end of the world scenario. Maybe something grand happened in the past but the story is wholly focused on the characters and their struggles. I guess 'kids' stories are like that, I dunno.
Fantasy doesn't imply any kind of world-ending scenario. I'm on my second fantasy novel, and no such threat exists in them. The first tells the struggle of a hero fighting for the independence of his nation after it got assimilated into a larger empire, and the second is a tale of survival in an island where a merchant ship crashes on the coast, fleeing from pirates and dealing with the sometimes agressive native population. Both are fantasy: the world is not Earth, the history and nations are made up, and there's a magic system and fictitious animals and plants.
There’s a lot of fantasy like that. See, for example, Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint and Privilege of the Sword, KJ Parker’s the Company, Peake’s Gormenghast books, Swordheart by T. Kingfisher, I think Simon Green’s first Hawk and Fisher novel qualifies (if I recall correctly), the Golem and the Jinn by Wecker, some of Guy Gavriel Kay such as the Sarantine Mosaic. Those come to mind but there is quite a bit of this sort of fantasy out there. If it’s characters you are interested in, it’s hard to beat Kay.
The Witcher series commonly deals with smallish conflicts/adventures. The Dark Elf Trilogy is essentially a tale about exile/forsaking one's homeland. And Adrian Selby's The Winter Road is a gritty (grimdark) regional struggle that reads like a medieval blood feud.
A good portion of D&D and Forgotten Realms novels are self-contained stories featuring recurring OCs but in self-contained narratives. I recall two of them; one was about a goblin cave and clearing it, the other about a dark cult underneath a city.
You could try some Sword and Sorcery stories. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_sorcery: Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus mainly on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters.
Yes, you can read and write fantasy where the conflict and the characters/storyline involved has broad consequences, or those where the conflict and its successful or failed to succeed/resolution is more narrow and affects only the main character or a small group or whatever. Epic fantasy often involves more widespread. My one series involves the fate of kingdoms. My other fantasy series (is LitRPG) and mainly involves the personal goal(s) and struggles of the individual characters and adventuring party. What they do does impact other characters in the storyline, but it is more incidental, and certainly does not affect/impact the city in which they reside. Much like what Lazaares indicated in his post above. Kid stores can be like either type (scope of impact), but young adult and adult as well.
I'm writing a series that, while it does have a fantasy flavor to it, focuses more on the characters and how they deal with the situations I've thrown at them. I did choose a sort of calamitous event that could happen if they choose to go down that path, but the purpose of it is really to set up the characters to make good decisions, and then benefit from those decisions. Or the reverse. Not everyone makes the right decisions. Aaaaaand not all of them make it to the end of the series. Just sayin...
Seconded. Robert E. Howard basically started the sub genre with Conan and Kull and Bran Mak Morn, and none of those stories—save perhaps “The Hour of the Dragon”—really dealt with earthshaking/end of the world scenarios. The short stories seem right up OP’s alley, but once Nilfgaard enters the picture things become a lot more epic fantasy/end of the world focused.
Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. series are Nero Wolfe ripoff inspired detective noir stories in a magical environment. The MC was a soldier in a proxy war between his empire and another, but battlefield magic was always cancelled out by the other side's mages, leaving the conflict in a basic sword and shield infantry war. He's a vet now and just figures out classic crimes with a hint of magic use.
