Which Campaign Setting has the best fluff? Why?

[Wraith Form]

Non-d20 and non-fantasy? Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown. That's the good shiii...umm...stuff.

I agree with the previous poster who mentioned the Forgotten Realms in Ed Greenwood's hands, that always struck me as being well-done, especially in early Dragon magazines. (Does that mean I like the Realms via other authors? Not neccessarily.)

Midnight & IK is definitely up there, and Dark Sun was always a personal favorite back in the day...

...But who could forget Al Qadim?!?!?

 

[Faraer]

'Which Campaign Setting has the best fluff?' -- I can barely bring myself to cut and paste that appallingly demeaning, destructive, and linguistically insensitive term -- is the same as 'Which campaign setting is the best?' You might as well ask 'Which novel has the best fluff?'

As secondary worlds, Middle-earth, Glorantha and Tekumel are peerless. For playing D&D... too many variables.

 

[Doug McCrae]

'Which Campaign Setting has the best fluff?' -- I can barely bring myself to cut and paste that appallingly demeaning, destructive, and linguistically insensitive term -- is the same as 'Which campaign setting is the best?' You might as well ask 'Which novel has the best fluff?'

Jeez, calm down. You know there are actual, real problems in the world to get angry about, like Darfur and the war in the Congo, right?

 

[GrimJesta]

I've played scores of fantasy settings, from the famous and well known to the obscure or homebrew, and three stand out as the ones I like the best for pure fluff that makes sense, is playable, and fun to read:

1) Kingdoms of Kalamar.
-Hands down this is my favorite setting and the one I've had the most fun running. The cultures are realistic and three dimensional, the world is geographically accurate and interesting, and the fluff is great. I mean, you don't get much better fluff than an entire book for Orc culture (which rules, incidentally). I've played almost every setting mentioned here, and KoK is the one that wins the competition IMO.

2) Talislanta
- It's wierd, interesting and unique. I hear that it's d20 now, or going to be, but I still prefer the Talislanta mechanics for that setting. They just mesh nicely. But Talislanta is worth owning just to read and think "coooool".

3) Earthdawn
-If Fallout 1 & 2 had a child with Cthulhu and had it raised by Talislanta, Earthdawn would be its name. I love this setting. t's so damned unique and strange, yet cool and amusing. I converted it over to hackmaster, but I dunno if there's a d20 made for it.

Just my 3 coppers and 1 gold.

-=Grim=-

 

[Faraer]

Jeez, calm down. You know there are actual, real problems in the world to get angry about, like Darfur and the war in the Congo, right?

Yes, of course -- though cultural and spiritual problems can be as important as political ones. But within the field of roleplaying games, for the purpose of discussing them, this abuse of the word 'fluff' is a major threat to the culture that isn't yet so established as to be unchangeable, so I talk about it robustly.

 

[fredramsey]

I have never read a setting that immediately gave me more adventure ideas than Eberron.

Before I read it, I didn't expect to like it at all. But every page practically filled my head with ideas. It's going to become our main D&D campaign after my homebrew is finished.

Kalamar is very good except for one thing: They had to pick the most outlandish names for things, and not provide a pronunciation. Yes, I know the Atlas has a guide, but if they had just put a pronunciation in parentheses the first time they used a word, I would have liked it a lot better.

 

[Doug McCrae]

But within the field of roleplaying games, for the purpose of discussing them, this abuse of the word 'fluff' is a major threat to the culture that isn't yet so established as to be unchangeable, so I talk about it robustly.

I don't agree with you. I started a separate thread on the subject here.

 

[diaglo]

Jeez, calm down. You know there are actual, real problems in the world to get angry about, like Darfur and the war in the Congo, right?

just not here. right?

 

[Seeten]

One of the cool things I have gotten from reading this thread is how tastes are similar. I prefer:

1) Planescape

2) Midnight

3) Eberron

I havent read Iron Kingdoms, but those who like the three I just posted, all seem to like IK, which has now motivated me to go read IK.

Others who posted tend to like Greyhawk and FR together, etc. Those pairings of likes I find very interesting. When iGaming really takes off this kind of knowledge will really help to match gamers up, IMO.

 

[Oryan77]

It's Planescape for me.

Dark Sun & FR are good too but I think I like them because there were some good novels written in those settings, so it made the game better for me.

It's kind of strange that so many people like PS but it's not good enough to have it's own official 3e setting. PS even had crappy novels and there were only 4 of them released, but it's still a popular setting. I'm positive if they had written better novels and more of them that it would have made it to 3e. It's success is purely off of their great roleplaying books. But then again, I guess DS had lots of good novels and it was canned. Oh well.