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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tratyn Runewind" data-source="post: 643769" data-attributes="member: 685">Hello!As I've mentioned before, my two favorite TSR-produced settings are Birthright (for a more serious tone) and Mystara (more lighthearted).  Birthright is the best "generic fantasy" game world I've seen, had beautiful art and "production values" (until the later stuff, just before they killed the line), an interesting concept (the bloodlines) that was thoroughly in-genre and yet previously untried among published settings, and coherent religious and political themes with some solid thought behind them.  Execution wasn't perfect (what is?), but was better than the vast majority of similar settings I've seen before or since.  Mystara I like mainly for the fun NPCs (Haldemar of Haaken, many of the Glantrian characters, Terari, the Black Eagle Baron and  Bargle, Thar, et multiple cetera), the artistry of weaving the world together from the wildly varying background strands of the many OD&D modules, the myriad of well-developed cultures, and (again) the excellent quality of most of the supplements.Some intriguing non-TSR/WotC/D&D/d20 settings worth noting include GURPS Cabal, GURPS Cthulhupunk, and the new 5th Edition Champions universe.  I'm avoiding mention of licensed worlds (Star Wars, Middle-Earth, Marvel/DC, etc.) that are often deeply detailed, epic in scope, and way cool, but mostly developed outside the world of RPG'ing.Plenty of good worst-setting candidates have already been mentioned; I'd probably put the Synnibar/SenZar/FATAL-crowd and similar vanity-press-level stuff at the bottom of that heap.Yeah, THAT's totally unrealistic - a small, peninsular corner of one continent with representatives of analogs to the Greeks/Byzantines, the Romans, the Arabs, Germanic peoples, Slavs, Central Asian nomad tribes, Italian-like merchant city-states, and crusading knightly orders.  Or not.  Look up the history of the Balkans sometime.  And Southeast Asia is in a somewhat similar position with regard to the mixing of Asian cultures.  Mystara hardly seems out of line when magic, nonhumans, and active divinities are added into such a mix.Thyatis is not just Byzantine.  As another Mystara fan once pointed out, its three major cultures can be viewed as representing three aspects of historical Roman empire:  Classical Rome, represented by the Thyatians proper, Greek-dominated Eastern Rome (Byzantium), represented by the Kerendans, and the Germanic "Holy Roman Empire" (aka the First Reich), represented by the Hattians (one faction of whom helped form the Heldannic Knights).  Incidentally, for a nice fictional juxtaposition of Classical Rome with a Byzantine-like culture, see Harry Turtledove's "Videssos Cycle".Yeah, Heaven forbid any D&D setting should have even one tiny continent as a REAL high-magic area.The Hollow World was specifically created and maintained by the Immortals (OD&D "gods") as a nature preserve of sorts for moribund cultures and species.  To expect it to slot neatly into climatological models that don't have a Divine Influence component in their equations is folly.What, I don't qualify?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Granted, I don't walk up to total strangers browsing the D&D section in my FLGS and start blathering on about my wicked cool reformed-Shadowelf character, and how he totally "ownz" with his two-weapon style...Hm, didn't the old classic computer RPG, Wizardry I (Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord) have "Dragon Zombies" among its more powerful monsters?  Breathed cold-blasts, IIRC.  Perhaps they could be counted among the ancestors of the Dracolich.  Not completely sure whether this is older than the Realms or not - it's in the right time-frame, mid-'80s or so; I think it is just a tad older.  OD&D also had drolems, dragon-bone golems which have recently made it into 3e in the MM2.  Not sure whether the OD&D product they first appeared in came out before the Realms either - it's another in that same time frame.Anyway, hope this helps!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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