Whats better... Forgotten Realms or Grey Hawk

I'v played both. I enjoy Forgotten Realms more.

Here is why...

1. For third edition Fogotten Realms has a more indepth story line.

2. I love the huge pantheon on Toril.

3. I like almost all of the Prestige Classes on Toril.

4. NO Temple of Evil!

Fire in the Hole!!!!

Seriously, I'm going to sound not so helpful here and say that I like them both for different things — if I had more time, I'd probably try and run a campaign in Greyhawk in that it seems more wide open, wild and wooly to me. The FRCS' detail helps me now because it saves me a lot of work (although I'm not fond of the idea of having a storyline advanced by the company that publishes the setting).

In response to your specific points, the FR pantheon is hit or miss IMO, at a certain point, it's just too bloody large, although I really like certain gods (Ilmater, for one). The PrCs in Magic of Faerun and the FRCS are nice, but I'd be very likely to use those in a GH campaign. And I liked the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Then again, I'm a bit of a campaign world slut — the ESDs from 2e on SVgames have been a bear for me to buy and download using this dial up, but I've been doing it for a while. Not to mention the near misses I've had with Scarred Lands and Kalamar stuff — thankfully I have some self control. If I could, I'd go ahead and buy them all, but as is I run with FR mostly for convenience (and the FRCS really is a great book).

Best,
tKL

I agree with Kajamba -- Greyhawk is more wide open. That's why I'm currently using it; it gives me more freedom to include things I've developed or to place things from other supplements.

Forgotten Realms is more self-contained, and harder to integrate outside material into. But I have used it in the past, and will most likely use it again in the future.

They're both good. Just depends on the needs of the your campaign.

There's some important stylistic differences. Both work really well with the right DM.

I prefer Greyhawk because the kingdoms are closer together, they can go to war, and there aren't VAST tracts of wilderness everywhere. The realm of Iuz is a great campaign motivator. I prefer that to the mercantile Zhentarim (which is how I generally perceive them!)

But given a well-run campaign, I can go with any world.

Cheers!

Neither. Of the official settings, I prefer Kalamar or Dragonlance

If I had to pick, Greyhawk... for in almost every point the exact oposite reasons you like FR . Greyhawk is an old friend to me... Not exactly my favorite setting, but I have many fond memories of it.

I hate the huge, silly, nonsensical pantheon. I hate the storyline(s). I like the ToEE. And there are plenty of prestige classes for Greyhawk, considering that pretty much any WotC-published prestige classes will work for it.

No and the Scarred Lands kill them both dead, dead, dead. Honestly though. I like the Realmss, I like GH, prefer GH but my players look at it and say bland. I look at it and say "oooh, a real world". Scarred Lands arer still better and Kalamar comes a close second. Both are well thought out and not at all haphazard or after thoughts.

Jason

Well, I'm not a big fan of mint, but I definitely like Peanut Butter or Caramel filled chocolates. Coconut's not bad, but it's better with almonds.

Hmm, when I was flipping through the LGG (or whatever the big 3e Greyhawk book is called), the pantheon seemed just as big as the FR one - except with weird names. But I like having lots of gods. Not of all them have be in places of importance after all. I use gods that I like, and lock the others down in the basement.

A story line in a campaign setting is bad, IMHO. It's good for the setting to set up lots of potential conflicts and adventure hooks, but not so good to have a meta plot, because those tend to marginalize PC actions, or railroad them.

However, I like FR. I'm buying a setting, I'd like for it to have plenty of detail. It's easier for me to change what I don't like than make up completely new stuff. I don't really have much of a problem integrating stuff into FR. I'm dropping the Banewarrens in Sembia, and modifying one of the cities to fit it, and I've driven the drow out of the Dalelands - since that was our last campaign. It's easy to rip apart or substitute areas of FR that no one ever uses.

Basically, I think it comes down to what we're familar with. I started playing in 2e, and we mostly used FR and Karameikos from Mystara. The pantheon isn't so big when you've used it for awhile. While I'm not an FR expert or have all the old books, I do know the setting pretty well. On the other hand, when I played in a Greyhawk game, I was pretty much lost and confused. I didn't know the gods, geography, history etc. And there wasn't a good place to learn it.

But FR isn't a great place for some storylines. The nation states are pretty weak and far apart. Most important places are city states (Waterdeep, Raven's Bluff, Westgate, etc) or poorly organized collections of them like Sembia or Calimshan. True nation-states like Cormyr and Thay and rare and far apart. Therefore, large scale wars are rather difficult to keep believable, because supply lines could be 1000 miles or something.

The FR Campaign Setting book is excellent, and the other FR books are good too. Better than Greyhawk, IMO. However, I would never run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms with my current group. Three of them have read everything about the realms ever published, it seems, and having my players know so much about the world would irritate me to no end. Especially since two of them have meta-game tendencies.

I'm a Kalamar fan all the way.

Forgotten Realms is amazing. The amount of time put into the design of that setting, even with the few cannon contradictions is mind-boggling. I prefer FR over anything else.