Best Campaign Settings to Lift From?

Retreater · Feb 8, 2019

I've mentioned before on here that I am running 4 campaigns. I'm trying to cut down my workload for obvious reasons. I have started creating a setting (being used across all 4 campaigns) and I have a good deal of the meta plot, nation, and factions. What I have trouble with is the population of adventure sites, towns, etc.

Are there any good resources for this, even if I split apart existing campaign settings?

I can't use the Forgotten Realms because some of my players have read them so extensively and can't separate player/character knowledge.

Celebrim · Feb 10, 2019

While I find the setting as a whole too 'grimdark' for my taste, the imagination on display in Golarian (Pathfinder's setting) is second to none, and I'd be happy to liberally steal from the setting. (And, for that matter, for a 'grimdark' setting, it's pleasantly happy to allow itself a primary color palette which is nice.)

Forgotten Realms is in fact one of the worst published settings of all time in my opinion, so yeah, don't go there. I can think of almost nothing about FR that is worth stealing.

Most published adventures can be adopted to other campaign worlds without too much trouble, so feel free to liberally steal adventures to create adventure sites.

lockyreid1 · Feb 10, 2019

For 4e specific stuff the Points of Light settings has lots of locations with adventure material you can steal from.

Other campaigns I really like Scarred Lands, or Arcanis for super interesting worlds. Loads of stuff you can steal from in those settings.

S'mon · Feb 10, 2019

I'm running Primeval Thule now, it has loads & loads of flavour worth stealing!

Zardnaar · Feb 11, 2019

Golarion and Mystara are good/Mystara is fairly obscure by now so a lot of players won't recognise names etc if you lift them wholesale. Mining some of the 4E material is also decent assuming you own it already, wouldn't hurry to track it down as such.

Basically if you can find a PDF for say $5 or $10 do that.

Eltab · Feb 13, 2019

Although you want to avoid FR, you can lift city populations out of the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. Change the names, most of the cities have no map, the PCs need never know. "Port city", "trade route nexus", "conqueror's capital", "cultural heritage site", "rebuilt on old ruins" are generic enough concepts that they can be cut-and-pasted into a new setting.

DeathbyDoughnut · Feb 23, 2019

I enjoy stealing things from all sorts of settings. Want a desert area? Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, Dune, Tatooine. Need some cool magical devices? Eberron, Numenera/The Strange, Final Fantasy. There is inspiration and things to steal from everywhere. My PCs just ran across a couple Devout Paladins for a Church of Light, they don't know these paladins are copy/paste Stormcast Eternals.

Dannyalcatraz · Feb 24, 2019

Steal from what you know and love...regardless of genre.

I once ran a supers campaign set in 1900. Besides the obvious Verne and Wells lifts, I stole stuff from Kung Fu, Wild, Wild West, Bricoe County, Jr., comic books, anime, Bond movies and Michael Moorcock plots to name just a few.

Lanefan · Feb 25, 2019

I'll add another vote for Mystara/Known World - you can start with the big hex map in the middle of X1 Isle of Dread (which is or recently was dirt cheap to acquire) and then go from there.

muppetmuppet · Feb 25, 2019

Depends what forgotten realms material they have read.

A lot of good adventures from what was living forgotten realms are available for free. These are ready to go if you are playing 4e and most are freely adaptable to a range of levels.

Some of these are chains of adventures which you might have more trouble fitting into your world unless there is a similar situation you can fit them to.

For example I have been running a series of adventures dealing with the abolethic sovereignty which I would think you could fit into any game world.