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Alright, I'm a fairly new D&D DM, I'm familier with the rules, but what sort of books are good for getting started with the fluff? I do like action-y books if that helps. (ask for any other relevent info, as I often badly word threads like this.) Much appreciated

Well, the fluff in D&D is fairly light as these things go. I would encourage you to check out some of the modules for the edition that you are playing. These often give you a good idea of the tone of the adventure.

One of the big things about D&D over the years is that it is a very open system. The core rulebooks try to stay away from too much description of the setting so that the players and DM have the ability to build their own setting. In this regard, any fantasy novels that you are familar with make a good base for your campaign.

When it comes to actual published material, the expansions (splatbooks), modules and campaign settings are really where you find a lot of the fluff. If you are looking for a well developed and completely populated world in 3rd/4th edition, a lot of folks are fond of the Forgotten Realms products. The place to start there would be the Campaign Setting book for FR.

Hope that helps!

Thanks pretre. So is the like a book for each setting? And what about stuff in the past, like the dawn war? (I heard of it but don't relly know much about it. It sounds cool though)

More like 'whole sets of books' for certain settings. If I'm not mistaken there were over a dozen Forgotten Realms sourcebooks in 3.x... at $40ish apiece.

Well, first off, what edition are you playing?

And yes, there are a number of D&D settings depending on what edition you are playing:

- Greyhawk (Default setting for 3rd ed and seen as a more 'traditional' swords and sorcery setting)
- Forgotten Realms (High fantasy, high magic setting used in most editions of the game)
- Eberron (Steampunky setting introduced in 3rd edition)
- Dragonlance (Darker and restricted setting)
- 4th Edition Default (Points of light in a field of darkness)
etc, so on.

Each setting generally has one initial book to decide the setting and then multiple expansions that give more information on pieces of the setting.

I play 4e and I have read the dragonlance books. I have read dragonlance though, and it is quite cool.

Nothing stopping you from running a Dragonlance game using 4th ed rules then.

play 3rd edition, but do so in the Greyhawk world... waaaay more "real" feeling fluff

@frginwntr: You don't like Dragonlance?

I've never actually played in it. I spent most of my time in Greyhawk in 1st through 3rd as well as custom campaigns in 2nd through 4th.

If you're playing 3rd Edition, there are already DragonLance sourcebooks available from Magaret Weis.

Read R. A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy. That's the very epitome of D&D "fluff."

My three favs:

1. World of Greyhawk ( Nostalgic/classic)

2. Eberron (love the '"feel" of this world )

Forgotten Realms (a very 'lived in" setting. Lots of material)

Keep i mind that if you are simply looking for fluff, lore or info about the setting that what edition a particular book comes from is largely irrelevant...

Also, what sort of stuff is there for the historical events in the setting? (I'm not too good with locations and stuff so bear with me)

Manchu wrote:Read R. A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy. That's the very epitome of D&D "fluff."

Yeah, very decent books. The first three Dragonlance are like that too. I never found a Greyhawk novel set that I liked as much as either of those trilogies.


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Chuck Norris wrote:Also, what sort of stuff is there for the historical events in the setting? (I'm not too good with locations and stuff so bear with me)

Depends on the setting. Most of the settings have significant historical data in their campaign setting book.

This is one area where edition matters, since most of the settings have progressed when new books have come out.


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Also, if you have creative bones in your body, I cannot recommend enough creating your own setting. The games that are most memorable from our gaming group are the ones where the DM crafted his own world and immersed us in it.

I prefer published settings. I feel like DM-created worlds are often very proprietary but that depends on the DM, of course. By contrast, no one at the table owns a published setting no matter how much the know or claim to know about it.

I agree, I prefer a written setting. Darksun, Ravenloft and Planescape are my three favourites, though I enjoyed Eberron too, once I'd fiddled with it a bit.

Iron Kingdoms was let down by some wacky mechanics, and I always found Forgotten Realms a bit too vast to really wrap my head around.

As far as 4th edition goes, the settings are:
Base Setting: Stereotypical Sword and Sorcery adventuring. Some decent cosmological stuff (Dawn War and so on)in an otherwise fairly bland setting.
Forgotten Realms: High magic fantasy
Eberron: Steampunk Fantasy
Darksun: Post apocalyptic Fantasy

The Realms are a patchwork of novelists' ideas. You should pick a spot and play there without going all over. I'd recommend the Silver Marches.

My current group is having a lot of fun with the current Pathfinder settings, which uses their own modified 3.5 Edition D&D.

The adventure paths are pretty much plug and play, easy enough to GM and have enough background to get you going.

They actively support their system and have lots of adventures in the works.

The Pathfinder setting is an even messier patchwork. Each country is basically a genre, many of which are stolen from D&D. Ustalav, for example, is their Ravenloft. There's a French Revolution country and a laser-gun-and-flying-saucer country. It's like old episodes of Star Trek: Want to have a cowboy episode? Just go to the Cowboy Planet. Nazi Episode? Gangster Episode? We've got planets for those, too!

Manchu wrote:I prefer published settings. I feel like DM-created worlds are often very proprietary but that depends on the DM, of course. By contrast, no one at the table owns a published setting no matter how much the know or claim to know about it.

Heh. I do agree with this, but have found that 'borrowing' from other DMs settings is quite amusing.

It is really up to personal taste though.

NO! Spelljammer is the best choice for EVERYONE!

Manchu wrote:The Pathfinder setting is an even messier patchwork. Each country is basically a genre, many of which are stolen from D&D. Ustalav, for example, is their Ravenloft. There's a French Revolution country and a laser-gun-and-flying-saucer country. It's like old episodes of Star Trek: Want to have a cowboy episode? Just go to the Cowboy Planet. Nazi Episode? Gangster Episode? We've got planets for those, too!

Yeah, but a given adventure path will generally only cover one of these countries at a time. When you finish it, then you run another adventure path in another country. It'll be different, but not so different to be confusing.

There's nothing inherently confusing about the Realms, either, at least as far as most folks would notice for the sake of playing a campaign or two. The main issue I have with Pathfinder Land is that it's basically a theme park rather than a coherent world. But that's not a problem everyone will have, I know.

Manchu wrote:NO! Spelljammer is the best choice for EVERYONE!

I so heart SJ. I still include bits of it in a lot of my homebrew games. In fact, most of the main settings include elements from SJ in them (astral ships, etc).

Spelljammer is a hilarious concept, but I don't know that anyone I play with could ever run a serious campaign in it.

Realms is probably great, it's just that I get to the gazetteer bit and get bogged down in the descriptions of all these places and people and so on. It's almost too rich for me- I can't encapsulate it easily and therefore it is difficult for me to develop ideas around it.

That's certainly my issue, and not an issue with FR, I know that just from the sheer number of Realms fans there are.

The next campaign I run WILL begin with the crash of a Neogi DeathSpider into a village.


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Da Boss wrote:Spelljammer is a hilarious concept, but I don't know that anyone I play with could ever run a serious campaign in it.

I hate to say it to an Irishman but that's your British sense of humor getting in the way.

Da Boss wrote:Spelljammer is a hilarious concept, but I don't know that anyone I play with could ever run a serious campaign in it.

Seriously? That's kinda weird. It isn't like it is slapstick, just play pirates in space or use it as a method to get between planes.

Realms is probably great, it's just that I get to the gazetteer bit and get bogged down in the descriptions of all these places and people and so on. It's almost too rich for me- I can't encapsulate it easily and therefore it is difficult for me to develop ideas around it.

That's certainly my issue, and not an issue with FR, I know that just from the sheer number of Realms fans there are.

Agreed. It is really difficult to make FR yours because EVERYTHING in the setting has been written about. There are no blank spaces to make your own. And heaven forbid if you have someone in your group who is more knowledgeable of the setting than you. lol

Da Boss wrote:I can't encapsulate it easily and therefore it is difficult for me to develop ideas around it.

Like I said, if you ever want to play in the Realms, do a campaign set around Silverymoon.


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pretre wrote:And heaven forbid if you have someone in your group who is more knowledgeable of the setting than you.

Hey, at least I have a chance in a Realms game. When I'm playing in the DM's world he is by definition the someone in the group who is more knowledgeable about the setting than anyone.

Manchu wrote:

pretre wrote:And heaven forbid if you have someone in your group who is more knowledgeable of the setting than you.

Hey, at least I have a chance in a Realms game. When I'm playing in the DM's world he is by definition the someone in the group who is more knowledgeable about the setting than anyone.

But that's the point, isn't it? The DM should be the most knowledgeable person in the game about the setting. Otherwise the players can run roughshod over the plot by saying 'nuh-uh Drizzt wouldn't do that as was clearly outlined in Splatbook X and reiterated in the Novel 'Drows are the Awesomes'."

I tend to think of D&D as a bit more cooperative than the DM handing down edicts. When I run games, I love to turn the tables:

Unsuspecting Player: "I want to go to the tavern."

DM Manchu: "Okay, what is the name of the tavern?"

Unsuspecting Player: "Whaaa-??"

I enjoy adding my own touches to the setting too, and I love it when my players take something and run with it and develop it themselves.