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Hey everyone.

I recently purchased the Eberron: Rising from the Last War book as reference material because I like the Eberron setting and I thought it would be fun to discuss the various settings and what people like about them.

For me Eberron is just the best. It has the most interesting things going on in it with the most conflict on every level of the setting. If you are unfamiliar I would summarize Eberron as magic-punk noir. Here is some more in depth elements that I like about the setting.

1) Religion. First, the gods are not active entities people can communicate with. Gods in Eberron are not entities of fact, but of faith. And every religion in Eberron has some measure of disconnect with every other religion. None of them are purely good or purely evil and all have good reasons why an average person in the world would pray to whatever. The principle Gods of the sovereign host are a inherent part of the world. The goddess of the harvest exists not as some distant entity on another plane but in every plant that grows. She is the harvest and the harvest is her. Meanwhile if you want to be the "good guys" paladins hunting undead and whatever the silver flame is your church. But unlike Pelor who is an all around great guy the silver flame are militant and sometime extremists. Their history includes the purge where the silver flame waged a genocidal war on all lycanthropes and drove them to near extinction. It's the noir in the setting but everyone has some shades of grey mixed into their black and whites. The dragons, as an example, are not alignment locked. Evil silver dragons exist next to good red. There is much more nuance and intrigue in Eberron.

2) Magic Punk. The tech level in Eberron is slightly elevated due to a resource called dragon shards (its a whole thing and very interesting. Read up on it). The end result is elemental airships and lightning rail trains. Cities with what amounts to electricity without it actually being electricity. There are limits to it. Namely from the requirements of Dragon Marked houses to build, maintain, and run pretty much all of it (again a whole thing. Read up on them).

3) A world fresh out of a war and precariously on the edge of a new one. Conflict is fertile ground for stories. Eberron is set just a couple years after a tragic event wiped out a whole kingdom and cause a cease fire. Everyone is recovering now. Not only are old enemy nations keeping and eye on each other, but the Dragon Marked houses who are by law and nature neutral entities were held in check by the continent wide empire before the Last War broke out now don't really have any governmental body that can stop them. These almost monopoly organizations are integral in everyone's way of life and that gives them political power unofficially though law forbids them from holding any officially.

4) Unique takes on the races and new races. Eberron introduces goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, shifters, warforged, orks, changlings, and inspired. And they all have unique places in the world. The goblinoids had a vast empire in the continents past. The drow are distant and mostly forgotten cousins to the elves who are as much good guys as anyone else. The orks were some of the first druids. The elves worship their undead ancestors raised to undeath with positive energy that guide their race as the endless council. Its neat. And again, no real good guys or bad guys. Lots of grey. Lots of ground for conflict.

Those are just some highlights. What are your favorite settings?

Aside from some all too brief sojourns into the Dark Sun, Ravenloft and a very left of field Spelljammer game never really got the chance to play a campaign in any of the proper settings as such.

Most of our campaigns all take place in a homebrewed setting/world , even if we cheerfully crowbar in ideas, adventures, gods, names etc etc from all over the place.

But i always wanted a chance to travel through the Dragonlance kingdoms or careen about the forgottem realms.

Given my groups stunning ability to seemingly only be able to play OOP/old editions of games I guess I might get the chance one day still.

Spelljammer is definitely my honorable mention. I remember a rumor that spelljammer might be getting a 5th ed treatment. I would buy that book in an instant. Spelljammer is the best of all world and then some. Litterally.

I was always fond of Ravenloft. The games I ran there were *my* favourites. Mostly because I tended to game with my "more serious" gaming friends there, and there was an... acceptance... among the players that they really could die, because it was really part of the core survival-horror aspect of many of the games.

I really enjoyed letting "that part" of my imagination run wild, and having those dumb-struck moments for my players as they processed what just happened.

Otherwise, I played with Planescape, and the Desert-World setting once each. Both fun, but desert-world got old fast for me. My friends tended to run games set in or heavily inspired by the Forgotten Realms... which itself is pretty generic.

And of course I ran a few games in generic, medieval fantasy world # 23 sort of thing. Sometimes the plot can fit in a very generic setting, that left room to grow in any direction.

Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, in that order.

I have played a lot of the settings over the years. I think I like all of them to one extent or another, picking a favourite is quite hard!

My least favourite is probably the Forgotten Realms. Bland and uninteresting, with a lot of tropes I just do not enjoy in fantasy. Never played Greyhawk but I like what I have read of it a bit more.

I love the 3e Swords and Sorcery Ravenloft, I think the Gazetteers are among the best setting books ever written. Fantastic line art as well. And the whole horror movie version of renaissance Europe is too good. That said, it is very particular and you would not want to play it all the time.

I also love Planescape for the madcap fun of playing a bunch of cynical cockney space pirates slicing through the Mutliverse. Great for madcap heist games. My first ever game as a player was in Planescape so it has a special place in my heart. It can get a bit too involved in the metaplots and stuff, so I tend to ignore that. Absolutely love the plane sourcebooks and the art style.

I really enjoy Eberron for the reasons Lance mentioned above. When I ran it, I teched it up a bit with some firearms and gave it a more 1920s feel. Airships are cool and I really like all the different goofy nations and cultures. Probably not my favourite setting but I enjoyed my time with it.

Darksun is really cool too, ran a 4e campaign there that went from 1 to 30 with a cosmic plotline. Really great setting, again, I ignore a lot of the WOTC "plot" and just use it as a pure setting, and the visuals from the old materials are just amazing. One thing I would like is a more gritty and survival based game in the setting that was actually fun to play.

That's it for official Dungeons and Dragons settings that I have played. Never done Spelljammer and tbh have no interest in it, never done Birthright though I think it sounds cool, the Pathfinder setting is alright but nothing too exciting.

My "own" setting at the moment is a pretty heavily modified version of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, mostly for the hex maps. I do love some of the kingdoms like Altanis and the City State of the Invincible Overlord is a cool fantasy city, but what I love most about it is how easy it is to adapt to what you want. I am running a sort of "Dark Ages" fantasy for my current campaign and the Wilderlands has room for whatever you want to put into it. It is designed to be adapted by the GM. The actual background for it is that ancient sci fi stuff with spaceships and so on, and I quite like that but if I was gonna do it I would have to GO for it, and make that a thematic core of my game and I would rather not.

But out of all of them, probably my favourite is Monte Cook's Ptolus. It is a city, but the city is so detailed and has such a massive series of dungeons underneath it that I have played in or run three entire campaigns just in that city, and I put Ptolus in all my campaign worlds, so my players often pass through on a visit. It is just so well thought out and detailed and has all the tropes I love - mad cults, sprawling megadungeons, dark lords and all the rest. It is also pretty clearly influenced by Warhammer, with Chaositech using Ratmen living in the sewers, and monsters that at least look a lot like GW Beastmen and so on. Great setting, shame the physical book is so hard to get and expensive, but the pdf is well indexed and includes a bunch of other stuff.

I don't need any of my stuff to be updated to 5e, it is easy to convert older stuff to 5e and I am happy with the original versions.

Favourite? Probably my own world I've built over the last 20 years. From the Freehold of Gamaria to the North to the 7 Jeweled Cities of Zhal to the south. All the way to the Hobgoblin Khanate to the East and the Silver forests of Shadralessilar to the West.

But If I had to choose between actual campaign settings from D&D I'd go Forgotten Realms. Is it generic and boring? Yes. But I know it. I know the cities, both small and large. I know the histories, the Gods and the Major events that happened in the world. It makes it very easy to use on the fly compared to other campaign settings like Ravenloft or Dark Sun.

Also Planescape is fun as well because it is weird. I once did a Monstrous campaign where a Troll, a Ghast, a Bullywug and a Gnoll all worked for the "Office of Felonious Retrieval". They'd portal between worlds to find Bounties on runaways from the outer planes all the while causing mayhem among the towns an cities they encountered. It was super fun.

Apart from Homebrews, this one, http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/05/od-setting-posts-in-pdf.html The setting implied in the original game. It has a proper Dark Ages feel, which I think is nice for a game that works best with a post-apocalyptic setting to begin with.

Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Planescape.

They're the best that I've played in, I love them all pretty much equally.

Easily Planescape. It's just everything weird amped up and then thrown off the deep end. In a good way. It also has the honour of being the setting for the best D&D PC game.

Never played Spelljammer, though that does sound like fun.
Ravenloft and ye olde Forgotten Realms are fun, too.

Greyhawk!

I think a lot of the old classic AD&D modules took place there, and the place was certainly big enough to make it your own too...

 Red Harvest wrote:
Apart from Homebrews, this one, http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/05/od-setting-posts-in-pdf.html The setting implied in the original game. It has a proper Dark Ages feel, which I think is nice for a game that works best with a post-apocalyptic setting to begin with.

I had a read through that, lovely stuff. I definitely think the Dark Ages is the best place to put an RPG setting. I sometimes have problems with my players having a totally modern mindset in that setting, but I guess as long as they are enjoying themselves it is all good.

The good thing about that dark ages stuff is the same thing i find good in eberron. Its the inherent conflict.

Forgotten realms is either too civilized or not civilized enough. Nations are so tightly packed that there is almost nothing to explore and nowhere for populations of random monsters to live. Laws and lawmen are everywhere and "knights" of one variety or another are dispatched to help with everything. If the players do nothing SOMEBODY else would because its a world so densely populated by problem solvers. Any organization thats out for themselves tend to be fairly minor. "Running" a city. Or so obviously evil and running a nation.

That odnd world is a world filled with wildlands. Kingdoms have little to do with each other and all of them are run by people ready to statt fights or manipulate. A place filled with conflict and mystery and the players have nobody to turn to for reliable help. Its just them.

Fertile ground for adventuring.

That is it, in a nutshell.

 Lance845 wrote:
The good thing about that dark ages stuff is the same thing i find good in eberron. Its the inherent conflict.

Forgotten realms is either too civilized or not civilized enough. Nations are so tightly packed that there is almost nothing to explore and nowhere for populations of random monsters to live. Laws and lawmen are everywhere and "knights" of one variety or another are dispatched to help with everything. If the players do nothing SOMEBODY else would because its a world so densely populated by problem solvers. Any organization thats out for themselves tend to be fairly minor. "Running" a city. Or so obviously evil and running a nation.

That odnd world is a world filled with wildlands. Kingdoms have little to do with each other and all of them are run by people ready to statt fights or manipulate. A place filled with conflict and mystery and the players have nobody to turn to for reliable help. Its just them.

Fertile ground for adventuring.

This is a pretty great summary of why I really liked the "Points of Light" style adventuring presented in 4e and other systems. The lands feel more wild and less settled, but I guess as far as Forgotten Realms goes it just has actual decades of world building into a defined space.

One of the reasons I like Ravenloft as a setting... you are well and truly on your own, as far as the party is concerned.

And there can be monsters inside the towns, no problem. Werewolf next door, necromancer lives in a shack by the town cemetery... mad scientist is up on a hill.

The inn on the highway is run by Vampires that actually live in an old pyramid, where dejected former clerics go with their children and a pair of rogues to complete deals for exotic spices... Good times.

World building is fine. But it didnt have to be so densly packed. Forgotten realms on a map has clear nation lines like the modern world and so little actual wilderness. You know those mountains? Giant city on top, dwarves city inside. Illithids under that.

Where does a bullette actually live where it wouldnt just be hunted down by like 4 other nations?

See that desert over in that corner? Every square mile of it is an empire. The age of exploration has long since ended on Faerun. And way too much of the world is populated by the good guys.

 greatbigtree wrote:
The inn on the highway is run by Vampires that actually live in an old pyramid, where dejected former clerics go with their children and a pair of rogues to complete deals for exotic spices... Good times.

Beautiful reference. Have an Exalt!

 Lance845 wrote:
World building is fine. But it didnt have to be so densly packed. Forgotten realms on a map has clear nation lines like the modern world and so little actual wilderness. You know those mountains? Giant city on top, dwarves city inside. Illithids under that.

Where does a bullette actually live where it wouldnt just be hunted down by like 4 other nations?

See that desert over in that corner? Every square mile of it is an empire. The age of exploration has long since ended on Faerun. And way too much of the world is populated by the good guys.

You're reading those maps incorrectly. A lot of those nation lines mean jack squat- they're claims at best. FR is mostly empty, effectively wild territory, even in 'real' nations like Cormyr , let alone areas like the Dalelands which are individual towns with virtually no military power.

And most 'nations' in the FR... aren't. Its mostly city states and small towns. Of the 'main contient' areas, Cormyr, Amn, Sembia and Calimsham (or whatever the Arab parody nation is) are most of the few real nations in the setting. There are a couple real-world expies in the SE and a few others like Thay, but that's really it.

As for too much of the world populated by good guys? No. The North (west) is functionally outposts and city states surrounded by barbaric tribes, whole nations tilt evil at various places, and major bastions fell long ago (Myth Drannor, etc). A good chunk of the Moonsea city states are actively evil, and you've got Thay looming over the eastern part of the continent.

FR has a lot of problems, but dense packing isn't one. Until you get to the Sword Coast proper, the Western half of the continent is basically empty frontier space, with 'towns' consisting of <100 people, and militias of 'tens'.

I really like Eberron for it's dungeon punk aesthetic, and I'm kind of obsessed with Saltmarsh. Which is in Greyhawk but I don't care about that. Just Saltmarsh, mostly because I can't get a group to run it for the life of me.

Does Elder Scrolls count? Ima say Elder Scrolls counts, given it's origins as Bethesda's founder's homebrew setting. Kind of bummed there's only ever been one attempt at an official Elder Scrolls RPG module and it had to be taken down because it was blatantly plagiarized from a DnD adventure. There's a decent fan project for it, but I haven't looked for any groups for it XD

Thunder Rift has been pretty fun as a “mini-setting”. It’s a small space (3 towns and some wilderness), which can be a good introduction for new players and GMs. Since it’s a small and simplified setting, it can help new GMs get acquainted with running worlds without having to sift through too much backstory. For players, there’s enough for a low-level campaign without having to leave the space. Just find another setting to dump this landmass, and you’re set for a few levels. Once everything’s been done, you can expand elsewhere.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Favourite? Probably my own world I've built over the last 20 years. From the Freehold of Gamaria to the North to the 7 Jeweled Cities of Zhal to the south. All the way to the Hobgoblin Khanate to the East and the Silver forests of Shadralessilar to the West.

Interesting. You wouldn’t happen to have posted this setting anywhere on the interwebs, have you? Always looking for new ones.

Forgotten Realms does very well as a vanilla setting, but the histories are unstructured and too random. Its an Ok place to visit but not to stay.
Greyhawk is even more so.

Of all the settings that had their own presence Dark Sun showed the most promise, however to do so you needed to tone it down a little, remove more of the wierdness and add more bleakness.

Loved Dark Sun, especially when the players were new to it. The trick to running it was to show scant mercy and punish mistakes heavily. Force the players to unambitious with their goals by making even mundane survival a challenge. Logistics is important, make them feel water waste as a catastrophe, a shared meal a heavy investment, and the in party bickering common to most of D&D totally unacceptable waste.
.....
"Roll up characters, cheating on the stats is not only condoned but advisable, it wont do you any good anyway."
.....
"No, you cant have a longsword and banded mail, here have a sharp stick. Sharp stick and ignorance."
.....
"Yep, that's right, ignorance. You don't know zip about the world except sun, sand, hard work, rough bread, and not enough tepid water."
.....
"So you want to play a mage yes. Ok, I advised you to pick ignorance <shrug> ok we do it your way. You still only get a sharp stick and your spell glyphs are embroidered onto this rag. As you aren't ignorant you are a threat to others even less ignorant than you, knowledge sticks out like a tree in the wasteland, and attracts big and dangerous things."
.....
"All set, welcome to Athas. You will likely not survive and not be missed, but if you enter the crucible cautiously, be sparing with your trust, and observe carefully without asking questions, you might survive long enough to prosper, and that's as much advice as I am going to offer."

Ravenloft, though I rarely get a chance to play it. Have only occasioanlly DMed it the past ten years, wish I could get in to a game to play it.

Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Planescape, in that order. I guess I find the 'wacky' settings more enjoyable than the traditional ones. Bakc in the day my DM ran AD&D in the Basic D&D setting, so that would be my 'go to' for regular D&D.

Official TSR stuff:

Ravenloft. At first a standalone module but it was very well done and really captured the mood and the players' imagination, too. My third favorite setting.

Planescape: Fun, high fantasy splashed with intrigue.

Greyhawk: The place where it all started. Great fun and adventure all around.

Other sources:

Arduin: One of the first really interesting alternatives to TSR's stuff. Fond memories. A great change of pace.

Hârn: My all-time favorite setting. Very medieval and incredibly detailed. It's really great if you like Game of Thrones or Vikings and want a campaign like that.

Epic of Aerth (from Dangerous Journeys): Detailed, flavorful cultures from across the world. Great if you enjoy high fantasy but want an Earth-like world to adventure in. My second favorite, after Hârn.