No love for Oathbound?

I rarely see this in threads (here and elsewhere) of favorite campaign settings. Why? It was created to incorporate just about any source of fiction (gaming and otherwise), is generally violent and the PCs can become very powerful (something many gamers enjoy). It has more flexability than most other campaign worlds (I have created low powered, low magic campaign seeds for the Forge, without messing with canon).

It has support, more than other campaigns like IK and Midnight. It has the ability to allow players to create any PC they want.

So why is it not one of the most popular settings?

My guess is due to lack of exposure. I own a copy, won it free at the most recent GenCon, and haven't even read mine yet (though I've had a hectic time of it lately).

Oathbound is easily my favorite d20 campaign setting, but I really can't answer your question as to why it isn't discussed more, DMH.

Perhaps there are a great many of us who disagree with your assessment.

I bought the book and just didn't like it at all. I sold my copy on Ebay before moving last Spring and good riddance. I thought the concept, with all the new hokie races and power ups for PCs was just ham-handed and ill concieved. It reminded me too much of a video game setting rather than a narrative-inspired setting with a sense of familiarity and verisimilitude. Don't get me started on the substandard layout, illustration and editing that is the hallmark of Bastion Press games. The only design work that the company has produced that passes muster is their logo which I can only assume that they out-sourced. They really need to find someone with some sensibilities to type and layout. Compared with Green Ronin, WotC, Privateer Press, and FFG (just to name a few) they come off looking embarrasingly amateurish.

Midnight, by contrast is a beautifully crafted series of books with a compelling storyline and a strong sense of what it wants to be. Instead of allowing "whatever PC that the player wants to make" it creates a lush tapestry that the players flesh out with PC created specifically for the storyline. There truly is something to be said about the Less is More approach to campaign setting and Midnight accomplishes it with a degree of panache that many other settings miss.

It's an opinion...

DMH said:

I rarely see this in threads (here and elsewhere) of favorite campaign settings. Why?

So why is it not one of the most popular settings?

Click to expand...

Couldn't tell you.

I am enjoying playing in an Oathbound campaign currently and reading through the setting sourcebooks.

Some aspects I don't like (mass combat and mecha from Arena for instance and some high tech places in a D&D straight world) but overall it has a lot of good stuff and good opportunities for fun play ranging from dungeons to political, and focusing on various levels of the world with lots going on for a party to get involved in.

Oathbound is good but does hasve some problems. I own all the books and think it is one of the most creative settings. It has great mystery and great ideas in it. It is free forming and specific, there are plots in the setting but no huge binding ones like say Midnight. But it does have problems like the art. The layout is actually pretty good, but the art is not. And I really don't like the races, they just don't make me want to use them. But I've found many of the new clases to be really cool.

I've DMed a couple of Oathbound campaigns and used it as a place where we would experiment with various rules/crunch but also made sure it was fairly RP-intensive. Both campaigns also involved evil PCs, an experiment in and of itself.

I have to agree, in part, with Scadgrad's assessment of some of the "crunchy bits": while I love a lot of Oathbound's flavour, I can't think of a single class, feat, race or other bit of "PC crunch" that would I would ever allow in one of my games.

No, it's no Midnight (simply superb, IMO) but it's still good and a great place to experiment with other products.

I just had to look into my copy of Oathbound as I saw this question . I found 3 reasons why I did not use it:

1. I do not like most of the illustrations. Races and monsters look like the remnants of a dissection by a skin fetishist.

2. The maps are abysmal. Sometimes I ask myself why anyone would even consider using the word "map" in conjunction with those images.

3. The rules are often a bit on the giving side. It's meant to be powerful, but I'm not sure whether it's balanced, or better, I doubt it.

Well, I find the concept of this setting fascinating. Some ideas are borrowed from Sigil. On the other hand, Eberron has taken up quite a lot of aspects of Penance . The concept is great, but they should have at least taken a different main artist.

I was thinking more about this last night, and I think one of the things that has hurt Oathbound is that the feathered fowl are really not designed as they were meant to be, due to the limitations of the d20 license at the time. The feathered fowl (and other NPCs) should easily be epic creatures, yet they were limited to 20 class levels at the time.

As for the art, I'm amazed at how many people have judged the product based on the art. To me, it is what it is, and I see it as a minor point to a superbly-written product.

As for the races, I found them to be interesting (for the most part). The Frey are the only ones that I have issues with since I am not fond of cats.

Still, though, I have yet to see the creative energy that went into the setting duplicated in any other d20 setting.

Midnight is excellently-written, but too depressing for my tastes.

Oooh, DaveMage has 999 posts. You're about to enter the dark side, DM.

I think campaign settings are like onions. No, wait, they're like opinions. Which, are a superset of onions, just with extra pi thrown in for good measure. No, that's wrong. Campaign settings are like a**holes. Everyone has one, and most of them stink.