Disaffected and Affected Setting fans!

Thinking about the proposed (and/or rejected) changes to both Eberron and the Realms, and also my own beloved Greyhawk, I decided it was a good thread to look at what first attracted you to a particular setting, then what made you think, "Forget this, I'm out of here!"

Or, if you've managed to stick with a setting and *still* love it... post that here as well!

Cheers!

I'm going to start with the Forgotten Realms.

Forgotten Realms

What hooked me into the setting:
It hooked me at the right time. I was young, impressionable, and just ending high school and moving into University. The original boxed set was such a difference from the Greyhawk set, with actual *characters* of the setting described!

Then there were the FR series of supplements, which would detail a section of the world, and also give these really nifty poster-sized maps, which could all fit together to make a *massive* map of the entire realms. All I needed to do was collect every FR supplement and I'd have them!

Why the setting lost me
Two supplements: Maztica and the Horde. Along with "Marco Volo". The Realms suddenly had become a cheesy place for ripping off real-world historical events. I'd also never got the 2e update of the setting, because it was way, way too expensive. And, in a move that was boundless in its stupidity, the maps in the later FR supplements weren't compatable with the originals! Forget that, TSR!

Also, the novels, which had begun quite well, had begun to take a definite turn to the worse. Of course, they let Jean Rabe write a novel as well. (You know, a setting seems to take a definite turn for the worse whenever Jean Rabe gets involved with it...)

Why the setting almost captured me again
Baldur's gate is an awesome game.

Why the setting couldn't hold me
Too much stuff! In the beginning, I understood the setting. Coming back after over a decade, there had been too much development, and a lot of books that I didn't have, and couldn't get. The 4e reboot might actually make the Realms relevant for me again... but it seems unlikely at this point.

Cheers!

Dragonlance
What hooked me
The novels. These were the first game fiction books I'd read, and they remain the best. (I'm going to ignore the more serious works of Feist, Erikson and Brust here). Oh, and you can play the modules of the novels? That's really, really cool!

What lost me
Now what? Unfortunately, Krynn never seemed like a good place to adventure after the main story was told. The follow-up adventures just cemented that in my mind - they really weren't much good. Ditto the novels after the Tales trilogy came out.

Why it really didn't hook me again
Saga! Age of Mortals! Woo - let's keep blowing up the world! Let's have the Heroes of the Lance die in really unsatisfying ways!

Greyhawk
What hooked me
The adventures. Look, when I started playing D&D, I wasn't really aware that these modules were in Greyhawk. But, hey - they are. And they were great. Then, in my first real (longterm) campaign, the DM set us in Greyhawk with the Temple of Elemental Evil, and that was really, really great.

What lost me
Unfortunately, at the time I was getting into DMing and actually properly looking at Greyhawk, that was the time that TSR had lost Gary and was charging ahead and producing really, really bad stuff for the setting. Funnily enough, the "joke" module WG7 "Castle Greyhawk" never bothered me. I was introduced to it by someone who thought it was funny, and I picked up his appreciation of some really stupid D&D jokes.

However, I couldn't forgive Jean Rabe for "WG6 Vale of the Mage", which really, really, really annoyed me. So, I ran early Forgotten Realms instead.

What lost me further
Funnily enough, although the plotline of Five Shall Be One really enthralled me - and I ran it for my brother and some friends, with my brother as the future King of the Frost Barbarians - the Greyhawk Wars and particularly From the Ashes really blew up the world in a way I didn't like. I've used aspects of those products that *have* worked in my campaign, but the totality is different.

What got me back
The 1983 boxed set. Let's face it: if you don't want to be dictated to in a campaign setting, but only guided a bit, it's pretty good. Also, I had good memories of my first real campaign, so when I got back to D&D, after a break of several years, I set it in Greyhawk, and the same version that my PC had previously adventured through.

And I've been there ever since - 8 years of D&D in that version of Greyhawk, with over 20 players having experienced it.

What helped it
The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is really nice.

Cheers!

Greyhawk.
What hooked me
The heraldy on the old pamphlet edition. Me at 12: "That's SOOO cool!"

What Lost Me
Nothing. Been playing in it for years. Oh I've played in other campaigns, and for long periods of time. But was never turned off Grehawk. Now I didn't game for years (lack of opportunity, not any loss of love for the game) and I missed a lot of the stuff people don't like, like Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes. But hell, if I don't like some published material I don't use it. I certainly don't include it and then whine about it. (That was not a dig at anyone, simply a statement of a possible way of dealing with this phenomena.)

Why I'm Still there
Oh I agree with ya on the 1983 Box set, Merric. One comment I have heard about Greyhawk is that it has so much space in it to put things. (Low population, large areas of wilderness). And that means as a GM I have more freedom vis-a-vis my stuff and published stuff. Always good to have room to move.

Forgotten Realms

What Hooked Me
Nothing. I was never hooked. But I was curious, I mean here was the actual game setting that that Elminster bloke in Dragon magazine was always talking about. And the maps are very pretty.

What Lost Me
Oh where to begin? Spellfire? (novels and game mechanics) The Moonshaes novels? Mary Sues galore. The fact that I am a down and dirty campaign sort of guy and FR is so pristine. And comic bookish. And twee. Oh look I could go on but it would merely incite backlash.

What Might Get Me Back
In another thread a couple of weeks ago someone suggested a Warforged from Eberron jump in and start hunting down "Mary Sue Connors," ala the Terminator.

Kara Tur

Caveat
OK I know this is FR. But at the time I got into it I didn't. It wasn't made explicit and I was too unfamilair with FR to work it out. Actually I don't think I knew FR at all at that point. And I never played it as connected.

What Hooked Me
Oriental Adventures!!!!! What a great book. Finally monks could do something cool! Cool Asian monsters. Samurai!!! Whoot!! It was a good setting too. You had a choice of locales: Good China, Bad China, Shogunate Japan, Civil Wars Japan. Even Korea and SE Asia had their fantasy equivalents. And good modules to go with it all. Mad Monkey vs Dragon Claw, Night of the Seven Swords and the Nakamura city setting. ANd there was a good mix of gritty (for me) and high fantasy (for the rest of my group) with plenty of built in fluff material like families and ties to one's lord.

What Lost Me
Once again: nothing. I would cheerfully play a game there tomorrow.

Frankly when I like a setting, I stick with it. I might not play all my campaigns in it, or even play in it for years. But that's not to say I won't again. And since my old Karatur box set is still lurking on a friend's gaming shelf, along with multiple copies of OA and Nakamura well let's just say: "That is not dead, which can eternal lie."

Greyhawk
What hooked me?/Lost me
I was never especially hooked. Some of it is fun and entertaining but a lot of it is rife with some of the D&Disms I find most irritating. The naming conventions are truly awful. I can forgive mundane names, especially if they're meant to signal that the residents of such a place are fairly typical sorts. The anagrams and high level of goofiness (I count militant neutrality as extremely goofy) put me way off.

Dragonlance
What hooked me?
Dragons of Summer Flame. I read it before I encountered any of the other books. I liked the Age of Mortals a lot. The notion of a world actually ruled by gigantic, cannibalistic dragons appeals to me still and the quasi-medievalisms are good fun.

What lost me?
The Saga rules just did nothing for me. I also became less and less enchanted with the desperately serious romantic side of the setting. Reading the original trilogy was another nail in the coffin. And tinker gnomes.

What might get me back?
I sometimes putter away on a much, much less romantic version of the setting that has a bit of a dark medieval flare. It's not really Dragonlance anymore, but it uses some of the elements. But in my version, the Knights of Solamnia are usually a bunch of lawful neutral jerks that like to lord it over the peasants whilst simultaneously bleeding them dry. Also, the Test of High Sorcery tends to brainwash those who go through it. You must foreswear all gods to enter the Orders, which are political and arcane cabals instead of alignment-driven. And druids are animists that the "good" gods and "evil" gods are keen on eradicating. In general, I abandoned alignment-based setting design entirely in favor of a set of mutually-exclusive and mutually-hostile worldviews. They're all fairly intolerant of one another (and detect evil will show anyone that's not sharing your worldview as "evil") and each is meant to have good sides and bad sides to it. It's a very gray place that likely would alienate the entire core audience for DL product. But I'm not selling it.

The Realms.
What got me?
I like highly-detailed high-fantasy worlds with scads and scads of magic and history and gods coming out their ears. A lot. It's my preferred setting. High-level D&D is comfortably superheroic for me, so I have no problem with high-level NPCs or demigods running around. Players do not ask me why Elminster isn't fixing everything for the same reason they don't ask me in a superhero game why Captain America or Superman or Other Powerful Superperson isn't fixing everything. Nor do I mind if any or all of these guys have wild sex lives. I got into the Realms after the heavy period of real-world pilfering, so things like Maztica, Kara-Tur, and such were beside the point.

What lost me on arrival?
Everything I've heard about the 4e Realms to date. Not one piece of good news in the lot of it.

What might get me back?
I'd like to say that a big post from Wyatt, Baker, Ed, etc telling us that the last page or so of the Grand History of the Realms was a bit of a joke that went over very poorly and was ill-considered would do it. But to be honest I think that would still leave me pretty angry.

Eberron
What got me?
I don't think I was ever rightly gotten. I did like that the setting embraced a more early modern period vibe instead of quasi-medievalism. Thus the printing press, the train, and the warforged were features. Most of the villain groups are very cool.

What lost me?
I don't really like pulp or noir all that much in my gaming. They aren't all that evocative for me.

What might get me back?
I don't think any setting change would do it. I'd just have to want to run a game set in a circa 1650 (with select bits of 1840 and 1914) to be into it. I actually like Sarlona a fair bit more than most of Khorvaire. Aerenal and Q'barra are good fun, though. My one planned Eberron game was going to extensively involve a Q'barra modeled heavily on colonial Africa, right down to racist Galifaran expatriots cursing the locals as lazy good-for-nothings unfit to govern themselves.

I'll list all setting I was particularly attracted to.

Eberron

What hooked me into the setting: The heroic pulp style feel. The wide variety of pulp styles that can be used in the world. The fact that heroes can be movers & shakers in the world before even seeing epic level.

Why the setting lost me: Hasn't. I'm a bit disappointed that this setting is a powderkeg that won't get explored in supplements because a part of the player base is against any advancement of the storyline (even hypothetical "option" exploration).

Glorantha (Runequest/Hero Wars/Heroquest)

What hooked me into the setting: The mythic feel. You can look at the first world map and see how the gods affected the world. You can see the footprint where a god tried to stomp out chaos. You can see the bull shaped hills where the herd goddess reigns. You can see the phallic spike under which the devil was imprisoned by the chaos fighter god.

Why the setting lost me: The endless nattering on "cultural reality" on the messageboards that started leaking into supplements. Greg deciding to completely change the world because he had an "experience" and decided that a god didn't make sense and thus completely retroactively changed the god and his effect on the region.

Why the setting almost captured me again: New, creative game system that is so close to the perfect game system, yet so far.

Why the setting couldn't hold me: Same nattering on Glorantha that virtually requires a PhD on anthropology, mysticism and Glorantha obscure knowledge, that still keeps leaking into the publications.

Planescape

What hooked me into the setting: Although I never played it (not playing D&D when it came out), the idea of a setting that made the mostly inapproachable planes something that can handle of levels of campaigns was appealing.

Why the setting lost me: The insane "cant" that made a few of the books unreadable. Also, a bad taste in my mouth from Planescape fans who insisted on forcing the setting on every single D&D setting.

Why the setting almost captured me again: Nothing really.

Forgotten Realms

What hooked me into the setting:
I flipped through the Waterdeep adventure (the last of the Time of Troubles). Although the module had a lot of problems, I loved the idea of gods walking the earth, and was intrigued by the NPCs presented in the adventure. So I picked up the revised boxed set and jumped in.

Why the setting lost me
Too much magic. I preferred a world where magic was seen as unusual, and where people saw wizards as dangerous and eccentric people. The Realms literally had a high-level mage in every city.

Why the setting almost captured me again
Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights almost brought me back. I picked up the third edition campaign setting, which was pretty good.

Why the setting couldn't hold me
My games are definitely not Realms-style. Changing the setting to fit the style of game I wanted would have been as much work as just doing a new setting.

Dark Sun

What hooked me into the setting:
The use of psionics. When I first got into D&D, I thought psionics was the coolest thing ever.

Why the setting lost me
The metaplot presented in the books didn't help, but the big problem was that it was tough to get a regular game going. A lot of people I played with didn't mind the setting as a one-shot, but didn't want it to be a full campaign.

Why the setting almost captured me again
Paizo's articles and the fine work over at Athas.org

Why the setting couldn't hold me
My preferences now run toward a more traditional fantasy setting.

Birthright

What hooked me into the setting:
Playing a king.

Why the setting lost me
Playing a king. The domain turn and the rules of rulership were a drag on the game.

Why the setting almost captured me again
When I threw rulership out, the setting itself was excellent -- still probably the best D&D setting I've seen.

Why the setting couldn't hold me
I never could get people hooked into Birthright, even as a normal D&D game and not a regency-based thing.

Council of Wyrms

What hooked me into the setting:
The hook of playing a dragon, combined with the surprisingly well fleshed-out setting.

Why the setting lost me
The lifespan of dragons made for a very static world. When the setting doesn't change significantly over thousands of years, it starts to wear down on my interest.

Why the setting almost captured me again
Just before 3rd edition came out, I had an article called "The Western Wyrms" published in Dragon Magazine that explored the lands to the west of Io's Blood Isles. Unfortunately, a year's worth of editing cut out all the details of the expanded setting and stripped things down to just rules about playing the alternate dragons in the Monstrous Manual.

Why the setting couldn't hold me
Again, the timeline problem. That, and the fact that not a lot of people are as keen on the idea of playing dragons as I am.

Thunder Rift

What hooked me into the setting:
It was my first D&D setting. The map of the valley came from a boxed adventure I got, and was the first thing that even introduced the notion of D&D as a fluid setting rather than a series of dungeon scenarios.

Why the setting lost me
I wound up adding more and more to Thunder Rift, to the point where I was incorporating just about every other setting I found. Eventually, the setting started to fall apart, and simply mentioning the name "Thunder Rift" turned off a lot of my players.

Why the setting almost captured me again
Unfortunately, it never did. I moved on to other settings, and have only occasionally glanced back at Thunder Rift's sourcebook.

Why the setting couldn't hold me
The valley is too darned small, and the population is too sparse. PCs outgrow the area after a few levels, and start looking for bigger and better things.