Which D&D Settings Do You Play In?

Over on the right of the news page is a new poll which asks which D&D setting you currently play in. Obviously WotC has its own survey data, and we know from that that 55% of people use home-brew settings, 35% play in the Realms, 5% in Greyhawk, and the remaining 5% is divided between the rest. I figured it would be fun to see how closely EN World's members track to that overall survey; how closely to we represent the official data? To that end, I've listed a number of settings. The question is what you PLAY in? It's not "what would you LIKE to play in", or "what would you like to see more support for?" -- it's what are you PLAYING in right now? I know some folks have more than one game going and they may be different settings. That's why I've allowed a choice of three in the poll. If you have four or more games in multiple settings -- well, I'm envious. I took the list from the Wikipedia page of 25 settings, so if you're mad and incensed about the list or its ordering or whatever (because Internet) blame Wikipedia! Some settings incorporate others (Kara-Tur is in the Realms, for example), but I"m keeping it simple with the top level list.

Here's what WotC's survey says we play (that data comes from Chris Perkin's panel at Gamehole Con). Let's see how closely we match it. The survey is on the right hand side of the news page, or it's at the top of the discussion thread, depending where/how you're viewing this.

 

[Pragmatic]

Definitely Forgotten Realms. Homebrew (okay, my definition, anyway) would work like this: take all of the above, stick it in the trash, get a fresh screen up on MS Word and a big sheet of graph paper...now start homebrewing!

Note that I'm a collector, not a gamer or GM.

However, I think that completely homebrew is impossible. You have to get your inspiration from somewhere, even if it's at the end of a long "stream of consciousness" (?) started by something you read 20 years ago when you were a kid. Truly original thoughts are rare--I doubt I've had more than one or two in my 45 years.

I'd say "homebrew" would be more of a "stone soup" ("a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and ooh, I just found this, let's add it in!") than a blank document. The more you mix in from disparate sources, the less it remains a variant of a published campaign.

 

[Eltab]

Now playing: 2 x FR. Tiamat on hold (as DM), EE newly begun (as PC)
Preparing for someday: homebrew "Intro to D&D" mini-campaign
Want to play: Dark Sun

 

[Shasarak]

No offense taken at all. It's a valid point. And I love Eberron too, so am certainly not opposed to seeing more support for the setting. I'm just trying to point out that WotC is not going out of its way to discourage playing Eberron even with 5th edition. It's there for those of us willing to put in a little elbow grease. But it's certainly doable.

My only offense is with the girl who decided to jusst ignore the instructions of the poll and vote for what she felt like and felt it was beneath her to offer any explanation as to why she can't play Eberron when the rest of us clearly can.

Yeah, I would be tempted just to grab my 3e Eberron books and do it myself.

 

[pemerton]

I voted GH, Mystara and Nentir Vale.

My current GH campaign is using BW mechanics rather than D&D ones.

My other current campaign is 4e. It is set in the default 4e comsology/backstory (so I ticked Nentir Vale) but also uses the Karameikos map (with Kelven, Threshold etc) from the B/X module Night's Dark Terror (so I ticked Mystara).

 

[Lanefan]

Definitely Forgotten Realms. Homebrew (okay, my definition, anyway) would work like this: take all of the above, stick it in the trash, get a fresh screen up on MS Word and a big sheet of graph paper...now start homebrewing!

Which is about what I did with my current campaign world.

That said, even though I was using FR as a basis for that previous campaign it didn't very often *feel* like I was running a FR game. Maybe it's because I completely ignored any FR canon and just used the maps?

However, I think that completely homebrew is impossible. You have to get your inspiration from somewhere, even if it's at the end of a long "stream of consciousness" (?) started by something you read 20 years ago when you were a kid. Truly original thoughts are rare--I doubt I've had more than one or two in my 45 years.

I'd say "homebrew" would be more of a "stone soup" ("a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and ooh, I just found this, let's add it in!") than a blank document. The more you mix in from disparate sources, the less it remains a variant of a published campaign.

Depends.

My current map(s) and campaign setting are based on some random doodles I did when I needed a new world in a hurry because a party in my previous campaign was just about to get planeshifted there; and said random doodles got my imagination going. From there I started thinking about a Greek-based centre to the next campaign, and started wondering what things might look and function like if I in effect turned the real-world Mediterranean on its end (i.e. have its long axis be north-south instead of east-west). Much tinkering later I wound up with something that doesn't really look like the Mediterranean from any angle, but "Greece" is on the east side rather than north; the "Romans" are across the sea to the west, and all sorts of other cultures both human and non spread out from there. The ancient history is designed to in some ways fit in with what a fellow DM has done with his, but the map and recent history is homebrew. The cultures are based either on real-world human cultures (with little if any regard to real-world timelines e.g. Greeks, Vikings and Sumerians all coexist) or on standard tropes (Dwarves in the mountains, etc.); and not quite 8 years in the players are still learning bits about what makes it all tick.

There's really nothing from a published setting in there though quite a few published adventures just happen to have wandered by.

Lan-"to ensure the right atmosphere there really should be a hard and fast rule that no setting is complete without a Norse-Viking culture in it somewhere"-efan

 

[DMZ2112]

For the first time in my life I'm running multiple games and none of them are homebrew. Dragonlance and Planescape. Happy to bring a little more variety to the poll numbers.

 

[RadarMonk]

Most of my games are either FR or some FR homebrew combination. I've done some Greyhawk campaigns and some Eberron campaigns though.

 

[Nawara]

My only hope is that, if they do an Eberron book at some point, they unruin the map scale.

Everything about the setting finally made sense when I heard that Khorvaire was originally designed to be the size of Europe until some WotC executive rolled up and said "That's not EPIC enough! Make it BIGGER!" but didn't actually change anything except the map scale.

As it is, it's kind of like adventuring in Pulp Siberia. Just hop on a train in a city and start going through trees, and trees, and mountains, and mountains, and trees, and trees, and river, and small town, and trees, and trees, and trees, and BEAR!, and trees, and trees, and MILITARY RESEARCH GHOST TOWN!, and trees, and trees, and mid-sized city, and trees, and trees, and river, and trees, and TIGER!, and trees, and trees, and lake, and trees, and less trees, and less trees, and grass, and grass, and GUYS ON HORSES!, and grass, and grass, and small trees, and small trees, and mountains, and mountains, and trees, and trees, and OTHER CITY!

 

[sunrisekid]

I use the Nerath map for our homebrew. For Tyranny of Dragons I simply reversed the Sword Coast map and changed Waterdeep to Nera. Lots of fudging, of course, but my players don't anything about FR (which I don't really like). I quite like a lot of the 4E vanilla campaign stuff, the cosmos, and the gods - we kept it all when switching over to 5E.

I was happy to see a few other people indicate they like the setting, too

 

[S'mon]

My only hope is that, if they do an Eberron book at some point, they unruin the map scale.

Everything about the setting finally made sense when I heard that Khorvaire was originally designed to be the size of Europe until some WotC executive rolled up and said "That's not EPIC enough! Make it BIGGER!" but didn't actually change anything except the map scale.

As it is, it's kind of like adventuring in Pulp Siberia. Just hop on a train in a city and start going through trees, and trees, and mountains, and mountains, and trees, and trees, and river, and small town, and trees, and trees, and trees, and BEAR!, and trees, and trees, and MILITARY RESEARCH GHOST TOWN!, and trees, and trees, and mid-sized city, and trees, and trees, and river, and trees, and TIGER!, and trees, and trees, and lake, and trees, and less trees, and less trees, and grass, and grass, and GUYS ON HORSES!, and grass, and grass, and small trees, and small trees, and mountains, and mountains, and trees, and trees, and OTHER CITY!

I've got used to routinely changing RPG map scales. My Wilderlands is 15 miles/hex, 3 times larger & 9 times the surface area. My Forgotten Realms is half the size, 1/4 the surface area.