Thinking about using a CS

[Kaladhan]

There's a lot of great campaign settigs out there. It all depends on what you want. Here's those I like:

Ptolus: All of the action happens inside the city and below it. As such, every enemy or friends that your players make are relevent, since they won't have traveled 200 miles since the last game. It has a very urban feel but it still has room for dungeon crawling. And the crawling actually makes sense.

Eberron: I think this setting is somewhat industrial revolution but with magic instead of technology. It lets a lot of free room for DM to put things in it. It's very good. It has a modern feeling that might not be for everyone, but my players can relate to that. Your milage may vary.

Freeport: Green Ronin's flagship setting, it's very good and very detailed. My downside would be that I don't think that it doesn't fit very well high level play.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

If you are going to go with a 3.5 setting (and continue to play 3.5), I highly recommend Eberron over anything else.

1. The world is designed specifically for 3.5 rules rather than layered with traces of legacy rules like FR and Greyhawk.

2. It's not inundated with decades of supplements, adventures, and novels that affected the progression of the setting.

3. It's consistent as the entire world was designed at once rather than developed over decades in bits and peices.

4. Mass transportation allows adventurers to visit multiple locations across the globe without having to resort to horseback riding for months at a time. A single adventure can span several nations and two continents while bringing the heroes back to their home base.

5. It allows for any genre within a fantasy setting, meaning you can play a horror campaign, a noir campaign, a pulp action campaign, a dungeon crawl campaign, or an epic campaign.

6. The heroes are the heroes. The world isn't littered with high-powered NPCs who overshadow the PCs. Most NPCs have *gasp* NPC class levels or have relatively low levels in PC classes.

Edit:
7. Eberron, being sort of modernized in its feel while keeping the medieval elements of a fantasy world, allows for players to more easily absorb into the style of the setting.

 

[Mitchbones]

Thanks for all the help guys! It helped a lot in deciding what setting to go with (I didn't know there was that many). I have decided to go with FR as I prefer traditonal fantasy, and from what I have heard it is a good buy.

As far as the players not feeling important mid-high level, I am sure thats something a DM could change himself.

I don't really need any of the supplements for FR do I?

 

[RangerWickett]

Take a look at the free player's guide and GM's guide for War of the Burning Sky. This gets you both a setting and adventures -- very useful if you're strapped for time. The setting has enough open areas you can put in whatever ideas you are fond of, but it has just the right amount of information to run a campaign.

 

[Ringan]

I think you could get by with just the FRCS. Also Wizards has a lot of Realms fluff stuff for free in the form of 2nd edition pdfs, here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads

 

[jdrakeh]

I chose the Scarred Lands recently for three main reasons:

• The books are on close-out at both Noble Knight Games and White Wolf. Buying new books for up to 75% off the cover price really appeals to me
  
  
• The books contain marvelous writing and thought-provoking artwork. This is especially true of The Divine & Defeated, as well as the three Creature Collections (two of which are fully 3.5 compatible).
  
  
• The setting is just different enough to be 'fresh and new' despite being largely core D&D. It's essentially post-apoc fantasy but has areas that are heavily influenced by Pulp and Horror, as well as Sci-Fi in the form of magic as technology. And despite all of this, it is internally consistent.

I also really liked Murchad's Legacy, which is available as a $12 PDF from RPGNow and affiliate stores. It's much more 'vanilla' than the Scarred Lands and self-contained in one 'book' but both of those things can be strengths in your situation (especially given that you can print out the 'overview' sections of the PDF as player handouts).

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I like the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

 

[Treebore]

Thanks for all the help guys! It helped a lot in deciding what setting to go with (I didn't know there was that many). I have decided to go with FR as I prefer traditonal fantasy, and from what I have heard it is a good buy.

As far as the players not feeling important mid-high level, I am sure thats something a DM could change himself.

I don't really need any of the supplements for FR do I?

No, there is no "need" for them, plus the free 2E downloads mentioned by another poster are more than enough fluff to get you going with ideas for about 10 years. Which is how long I ran FR, almost every weekend. For 8 to 12 hour sessions.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I use Ptolus and do recommend it. It's not cheap. On the other hand, there's those free player's guide PDFs you can give to the players, so maybe they'll help you out a bit with the cost.

 

[Thanee]

I don't really need any of the supplements for FR do I?

The FRCS is all you need to learn about the setting. It already has reasonably detailed descriptions of all the regions. The regional supplements are, of course, more detailed, but that's not necessary to run games there or get a good feeling of the regions, or even get maps, since you get everything important in the FRCS.

The only thing, that might be necessary in addition is the Player's Guide to Faerûn, as it updates the rules part to 3.5.

Bye
Thanee