Best and Worst Settings?

[Wayside]

What do you think the best and worst campaign settings are? Are there anything that causes them to stand out? What things make them good, or bad? I would post a poll, but there are so many settings out their that it would be impossible.

As far as what's out there for D&D, I'd say Dark Sun (but only with all the extra books, which you can get cheap now as ESD's anyway so there's no reason not to) and Birthright in terms of sheer potential. I'm talking about good campaign settings though, not interesting worlds or settings that authors have set decent stories in etc. A lot of people like Tolkien and Dragonlance, for example, but I think they're pretty crappy worlds to run campaigns in because the whole appeal of the setting is tied up in stories that have already been told. I STILL havn't got my hands on Dark*Matter but it's #1 on the list. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't praise it somewhere on these boards.. that can't be a bad thing.

 

[Wil]

Best Setting: Vimary for Tribe 8. It's detailed, interesting, has a lot of opportunities for any variety of stories and has a lot of ingenious twists.

Worst Setting: The setting of Cyberpunk 2020. It's an absolute mish-mash of the worst parts of the cyberpunk genre, with little originality or character.

 

[Shoon]

and nothing I tried to accomplish was ever original or able to surpass someone like Elminster (how can you outdo someone who is shagging a god?).

How about a divine menage-a-trois?

Best setting: I'd say Scarred Lands (I'm comparing it strictly to the TSR settings). It really, REALLY deviates from the norm in very cool ways (see the Slitheren, Hollowfaust and the Sutak), but it still feels like D&D. Plus, it's the only setting where an evil country is growing steadly (Calastia), IIRC. I mean, Iuz self-destructed himself. Weeeee.

Best TSR setting: Mystara. Sooo cooler than Forgotten Realms. And no rabid fans.

Honorable mentions: Planescape and Ravenloft. Both did not feel like D&D, however, and the lingo in PS is irritating (it's fine to have "jink" and "rattlebox" as Sigil slang, but I can hardly picture Bahamut saying "Pike it, sod!"). But they're good settings in their own right.

Dishonoroable mentions: Dark Sun, because it centered on 2E psionics. Spelljammer, because... well... god damn it, it just sucked. I mean, flying vessels in space? Meeting a mind flayer in an orbital asteroid? This is like getting high without smoking pot or crack! And finally, Greyhawk. It is "generic" in concept, and "war-like". Or maybe it isn't war-like. No one can define GH thanks to the Canon Police. Any attempts to turn this setting into a playable, well-definied one is doomed.

Worst setting: Forgotten Realms, for too many reasons. The 2E era sucked beyond belief. The FRCS is the only good stuff that came out of FR in 3E. And people still like it. And they like the novels. Dear god, what horrible novels. I mean... talking mules (War on Tethyr)?

 

[Kenshiro]

Best settings:
Exalted: the sheer epic scope, characters, and mix of classical myths/anime/Hong Kong cinema/videogames makes it a great setting, IMO.

Adventure!: rocket-powered zeppelins and death cults, Tommy guns chattering in cold New York nights and the perfect balance of action and story...

Honorable Mentions: Feng Shui, Heavy Gear, CoC, Unknown Armies, Gamma World.

Worst Settings:
Dark Sun: I wanted to like it...I really did...and then...pfffffhhhtt!

Forgotten Realms: Make the hurting stop!

Dishonorable Mentions: Dragonlance, Oriental Adventures (not the current one, that's one's pretty good, I think), Conspiracy X, WoD (sooooo much lost potential)

 

[Nightfall]

Re: Re: Re: Thanks for the plug Nightfall but...

Unfortunately, I didn't have anything to do with Veil of Malice but that shouldn't stop you from getting it when it does come out.

DPG looks at it this way, quality before quantity. Veil of Malice *might* take some time to come out but it will be worth the wait.

And don't sweat the slip up too much, I'm just a picky perfectionist.

BTW, read this if you haven't already. Or not. On second thought don't read it. Heh.
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36758

Well thanks again rob. Even if you're not involved, I'd be happy to pick up Veil of Malice when it comes out.

 

[Nightfall]

The Campaign I Can Be Most Creative In: Any homebrew. Published settings, I have to read what everyone else has come up with first. I can't just take the concept and strip out the book (because then I'm out $40).

Pick up the Ghelspad or Termana Gazeeter. That might help you out in understand parts of the Scarred Lands. Cheap too. Both of them are under 10 dollars.

 

[FriendlyFiend]

Favourite setting: Planescape

Surely this was TSR's labour of love? While FR2e and Ravenloft 2e were seeing (IMHO) a substantial quality drop, TSR was producing some of their best looking, best written, best quality work in Planescape. I love it for the enormous scope, I love it for the fabulous city of Sigil (especially that Dickensian London feel that no-one else has ever got quite right), I love it for the Bleak Cabal (what other game has given players the opportunity to be existentialists), I love it for all those big boxed sets, I love it for adventures like Dead Gods.

Honourable mentions: Dark Sun, Al Qadim

Most disappointing setting: Ravenloft.

I loved I6 Ravenloft. It's probably the best adventure I've ever DM'ed - and certainly the one that's most memorable some fifteen-odd years later. I just think the attempt to use it (and its less-successful sequel) to launch a whole D&D setting was always going to have problems, especially when you get the mix and match "this is from Bram Stoker, this is from Mary Shelley, this is from "The Mummy" approach that was eventually adopted. Give me nineteenth century Mittel Europa on its own, don't give me Louisiana and the desert wastes of Egypt as well.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Looks like I'm gonna have to go against the grain here...

Best Setting: Forgotten Realms. The 3E FRCS book is an example of how a campaign setting book should be done, and I've found this to be my favorite campaign I've played so far. You can journey in Amn for months, and when you get bored with that region, you can go to the Jungles of Chult and give an entirely different flavor to the campaign. I haven't gotten sick of it yet.

Runner-up: Scarred Lands. A world still recovering from an apocolyptic war between Gods and Titans. Kinda dark, but not in an angsty teenage goth way, I'm talking about a Mad Max meets Conan the Barbarian way. I like this setting a lot.

Worst Setting: Greyhawk. I realize that Greyhawk may have been king 15 years ago, but those days seem to be over. The Living Greyhawk Gazeteer is without a doubt the worst D&D 3E purchase I've made. It was overpriced, shoddy, and none of my players cared for it in the least. Too bad, it had a lot of potential.

 

[mrswing]

I agree with all the votes for Al-Qadim for best AD&D-setting. It just OOZED style! And it perfectly put players and DMs in the right frame of mind for the setting.
I liked Dark Sun (first edition), and the post-war Greyhawk (though the abundance of dungeons in the landscape is at odds with the dark fantasy/political ambiance.

For D20 both Scarred Lands and Kalamar are good, though SL is more immediately impressive with its high fantasy trappings. Kalamar has no real hook, but it does an admirable job of providing tons of plot hooks for more 'realistic' (i.e. political intrigue rather than year-long dungeon crawling)campaigning.

My favourite all-time setting is Talislanta though. A really different and extremely rich fantasy setting which allows for just about any style of play, and really inspiring (Xambrian wizard hunters... Coolest. Archetype. Evar??)

Forgotten Realms surely isn't the worst setting ever, but I have been underwhelmed by it from the start (even while buying every damned supplement, new edition and adventure ever released for it). It is both too generic and too all-encompassing, and while there have been some first-class releases for it, in the end it has never been able to inspire me. And with the hundreds of mega-powerful NPCs, organizations, plots and counterplots, never mind the fact that the largest demographic seems to be 'adventurers', the Realms have never seemed like a real place to me. And attempts to provide a more 'real' framework such as the Horde campaign never really worked, as far as I was concerned - why didn't Khelben Blackstaff, Elminster (yuck) and the Simbul just blast these underpowered nomads to bits? It's entirely possible to have satisfactory games (or even campaigns) in the Realms, but I think the core concept (or rather lack of one) has always worked against it.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

My favorite setting would be:

Ravenloft. I have not yet had a chance to DM it though if my players are not careful that may change.

The setting I like least:

Hmmm, that is a hard one. I loved the DL novels and since I do not game in DL I cannot separate the two in my mind. DarkSun never once for a second interested me.

Planescape was interesting but I despised the cant.