Campaign Settings you like

[Mallus]

While I think Eberron is well done, I have a nostalgic fondness for Greyhawk, and I find Tekumel to be a mad work of genius, the only settings I really <heart> are the ones I had a hand in creating: The World of the Islands (2e), The World of CITY (3e), and The Port on the Aster Sea (4e).

I'm so vain... I probably think these setting are about me.

 

[Caerin]

Not including various DM home worlds, more or less in order:

Planescape
The Diamond Throne
Golarion
Dark Sun
Eberron
Forgotten Realms
Rokugan

 

[MortonStromgal]

The Old World (WFRP), Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Desolation, Mythic Europe and Middle Earth.

 

[Pseudonym]

Of the made for gaming settings out there, I really like Hârn, Warhammer's Old World, Eberron and even the Nentir Vale. It's starting to grow on me.

I really love Middle Earth, but even after playing MERP, Decipher's game and various home brewed versions, I really can't figure out how to run a game there.

 

[The_Gneech]

To do Middle-Earth, you'd sorta have to approach it like a TV series -- throw out the plot of the books and just use the setting as a backdrop (or at least have the war be never-ending and leave out the One Ring).

...which I've thought of doing, actually, but in the end went in another direction.

FWIW, you might look into LotRO ... they've done a pretty good job with making M-E work as a "campaign setting" by having you following just on the heels of the Fellowship (and occasionally catching up with them so they can make "guest appearances" before you get caught up in another subplot again).

-The Gneech

 

[Shemeska]

Planescape
Golarion
Eclipse Phase
Ravenloft
Darksun (2e)
FR (pre-4e)
Cthulhutech
Shadowrun
Earthdawn

 

[arscott]

I'm not a fan of the older D&D settings. Greyhawk and FR feel, well, like somebody's homebrew campaigns--Lots of "making this up as we go along" and "you had to be there" moments. Dragonlance is a well-oiled machine, but has no soul. Spelljammer and Ravenloft feel gimmicky.

Dark Sun is the big standout. It's unique, coherent, and kind of badass-- all things that I look for in a setting whether player or GM.

I'm a much bigger fan of newer settings: Planescape suffers a bit because it was built to fit existing D&D cosmology, but it's got enough character to withstand its drawbacks.

Eberron is probably my favorite D&D setting. It was incredibly well thought out, and it shows. It feels both familiar and unique, and it's perfect for the sorts of urban-intrigue adventures that I enjoy.

The "Points of Light" non-setting has some really good aspects to it--the 4e team looked at 40 years of D&D history, and tried to take the best bits and recombine it in a way that pays homage to what has gone before, but isn't beholden to it. Unfortunately, the core materials are way too light on fluff, and instead of releasing it as a setting they just decided to graft pieces of it into FR and Eberron.

 

[Set]

Eberron is probably my favorite D&D setting. It was incredibly well thought out, and it shows. It feels both familiar and unique, and it's perfect for the sorts of urban-intrigue adventures that I enjoy.

While it's not my favorite, Eberron is probably the best pure D&D setting, in that it was explicitly designed to be a D&D setting, affected by thousands of years of dragons and magic and whatnot, unlike Greyhawk and the Realms, etc. which are kind of neat faux European nation-states that manage to exist in an uneasy static state, blithely unchanged by the magic, dragons, etc. that fill their world, and sort of thrown together willy-nilly over many years.

Eberron also benefitted from having not as many cooks in the kitchen, at least in the initial design phase, and being primarily designed in a single chunk, from the top down, instead of fleshed out in an expanding 'points of light' fashion that led to some areas being wildly off-theme, as has happened in slower-developed / bottom-up designed settings.

(Dark Suns and Ravenloft also benefitted from top-down design being linked to a core theme, although that theme was tight enough that if it didn't appeal to the reader, it pretty much made the entire setting unappealing...)

 

[Whisper72]

Call me crazy, but my top favorites are:

1. Spelljammer
2. Planescape
3. Hollow World

Yeah, I love massive odyssy type adventures where the PC's keep moving about exploring new world where no PC has gone before....

 

[humble minion]

I love Dark Sun. I even love the backstory, though the events of the Prism Pentad need to be forgotten as quietly as possible. The low-level survivalist brutality and high-level epic savage grandeur are something to behold. Lynn Abbey's Rise and Fall of a Dragon King is the best illustration of 'my' Dark Sun.

I love a very particular version of Ravenloft - the 3e version that the Kargatane were exploring through the Gazetteer line for S&S, before all that went pearshaped. When Ravenloft was starting to actually become a world of its own, rather than just a loosely-connected series of settings for one-shot adventures. Probably the best example of D&D at a slightly advanced technological level, imho, though obviously hampered in implementation by the limitations of the d20 system.

I love bits of the Forgotten Realms (the 3e version), and the further from the ever so samey Waterdeep-Dalelands-Cormyr heartlands they are the more likely I am to love them. Mulhorand, Unther, Chessenta, the Vilhon Reach, the Great Rift, Anauroch, the Shaar, the Golden Lands, the Shining South, Rashemen and Thay. but FR is so varied that if you can't find SOMETHING you love in there then I'm inclined to believe you're being curmudgeonly for the sake of it!

I love Zakhara. Genies and swashbuckling and good manners and lovecraftian horror. Such a perfectly designed world for the sort of games that Al-Qadim was intended for.

I love the Iron Kingdoms, though as an RPG setting they've gone a bit the way of the Warhammer world in recent years - the necessity of strongly branding and differentiating the opposing factions for a tabletop wargame makes everything very all-or-nothing and cuts down on the roleplaying possibilities provided by ambiguity and cross-cultural interaction.

But having said that, i love the WH40K universe in all of its gonzo grimdark illogical hopelessly tyrannical glory.

I love Castle Falkenstein.

I love Vampire: the Masquerade, just by itself, without any of the other zillion world of darkness critters that eventually made the setting collapse in on itself under the weight of its own inherent contradictions.

I love most of Planescape, though if I were ever running it I'd probably find a reason to severely de-emphasise the factions. But the sheer scope and breadth and possibility of a setting where the PCs can encounter anything or go anywhere that might conceivably exist in the multiverse, no matter how improbably, is very appealing.

I actually liked Maztica, even though it was a massive historical ripoff, but unfortunately they blew it up in the first novel trilogy - before the first boxed set was even released! What a waste. It never recovered after that.

I quite like Golarion, but it's very much what it was designed to be - a setting where there's a nation that allows you can play any of the 'standard' D&D games - gothic horror, jungle exploration, Arabian, Egyptian, viking, etc, etc, etc. It's very solid and some of the detail is magnificently crafted, but it just seems to be lacking that little bit of mad inspiration.