What Is Your Favorite Campaign Setting?

[Maenalis]

Favorite: Ptolus
Top 3: Eberron & Forgotten Realms (+ Nentir Vale is part of my FR).
Top 6: Golarion, Ars Magica (Real World- Mythic Europe) and Freeport.

I recently started reading the Star Wars FFG books and was surprised how good and useful the campaign materials were. (After reading several other Sci-fi campaign books).

 

[Wolfpack48]

Oh. Glorantha, Greyhawk, Harn.

 

[Ringtail]

Forgotten Realms, though its a love-hate relationship. With so many different authors over so many years, I think the setting has an identity problem and has become a bit too generic in modern versions. However I really love the old-school Greenwood stuff, which feels far more consistent and evocative. Also Nostalgia, I've had so many good memories with my best friends there and it all comes flooding back whenever I think of the Realms.

I also really like the Critical Role Wildemount setting. Its not super amazing or anything, I just really like how that book is written and organized. It feels more useful as a GM reference guide, rather than just history textbook of fantasy land.

 

[Tonguez]

My own 17th century gothic Earth
The Old World Warhammer Fantasy
Karameikos
Al Qadim

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Glorantha.

The incredible depth of the setting coupled with the way everyday life influences and is influenced by mythic elements makes it stand out to me like no other.

My favorite adventures have revolved around the edges of Prax including Pavis and the Big Rubble, as well as heroquesting around the River of Cradles and out into the Praxian wastes before they became wastes. We came within a hair of undoing the Morokanth's victory during the establishment of the Survival Covenant, and one of our PC shamans brought the spirit of the last truly human tribeswoman from the people who would become Herdmen out into Time with him. That campaign fell apart due to graduations over thirty years ago now, and we left off with us looking for a way to embody said spirit in a human form again with the goal of restarting the tribe - and morokanth assassins on our trail, for obvious reasons. It was pretty wild, and I've never been in such an ambitious (and canon-threatening) Glorantha game before or since.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

In no particular order:

Legend of the Five Rings - Rokugan
Ars Magica - Mythic Earth
Shadowrun - The 4th World (4th? Maybe it was The 5th World. I don't remember.)
Any generic fantasy - Greyhawk
Marvel FASERIP - Marvel Universe
Champions - Champions Universe

Honourable Mentions - Pendragon's Mythic Britain; Warhammer's Old World. But I haven't played more than a couple of sessions in either campaign.

Re. meta-plots. I use the bits I like, ignore the bits I don't. Especially for sprawling, ever-changing, and wildly inconsistent settings like the Marvel Universe.

 

[GrimCo]

Fantasy wise it would be Ravenloft ( including Masque of Red Death), WH, Dark Sun in that order. I love more grim&gritty games

SF wise 40k and Cyberpunk. Same as above. Dark and gritty.

Shadowrun is also in my favourites, i like cyberpunk meets fantasy.

 

[schneeland]

Shadowrun - The 4th World (4th? Maybe it was The 5th World. I don't remember.)

Shadowrun itself/2050+ would be 6th world IMO. 4th would be Earthdawn if I remember correctly (though this is probably no longer canon).

 

[DragonLancer]

I have a couple that I really love.

1. Dragonlance. Post-War of the Lance but before they ruined it with the Chaos War storyline. Krynn was the world that got me into D&D in the mid-80s. I like it for the more romanticized fantasy in the D&D genre.

2. Dark Sun. 2nd edition only as no other rule set has done it justice to me. Also, I like the initial release before TSR ruined it by killing off half the sorcerer kings and leaving the setting somewhat toothless. Great mechanical changes to the system and well implemented environmental dangers .

3. Scarred Lands. A setting published for 3.0 D&D in a world still recovering from the war between gods and titans. Many great campaigns in this one but the more they released for it, the more the magical element that drew me to it (the mystery if you will) the less interested I became. Thinking of using it for an upcoming 5th edition campaign though.

4. Honorable mention for Forgotten Realms. Ran many many campaigns here during 2nd edition, nearly always Sword Coast as it was the more interesting area for me. Loved the depth and complexity but ultimately got too big. Still a top 10 setting.

 

[Desdichado]

I can't really do someone else's setting very well and I love homebrewing, but I've enjoyed reasonably well playing or running Eberron, Planescape, Star Wars, Delta Green, "vanilla" Call of Cthulhu, Iron Kingdoms (before the minis games took over), Freeport, Iron Lords of Jupiter (brief though it was) and some campaigns that were nominally set in Greyhawk. If you expand that to settings that I've read but never played, it'll at least triple, although I won't list them for fear of missing some. For sure the Warhammer Old World and Traveller Third Imperium would be on that list, though.

EDIT: Oh, and Golarion, I guess. I actually think of Golarion is several campaign settings glommed together, and of them, I think Ustalav is my favorite setting within a setting. But even then, when I went to "use" it, I rebuilt it from the ground up and changed all the names, the geography and many of the details.