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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 9828610" data-attributes="member: 2209">Ooh, good choices all.Aerth has really cool history I like a lot and incorporate into my homebrew mashup as a minor background element. A prior age of dwarf and elf and humanoid dominance replaced by the current human one, and the fairly distinct and unique past ancient empires of sphixes and nagas. Plus the actual setting for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line of adventures through 3e, 3.5, Castles & Crusades, Osric, 4e, and Dungeon Crawl Classics, which includes a DCC Freeport module and the pirate city itself integrated into the setting. Classic D&D, pirate themes, ancient empire stuff, a lot of fun DCC of various sorts. The majority of the current setting however did not inspire me to really explore it though. 4e Punjar has a very Swords and Sorcery Lankhmar/Conan feel to it.FR and Greyhawk 1e are fun, both fairly open classic D&D settings with pantheons I found engaging and also distinctive things like Conan Stygia style Red Wizards and the Greyhawk Scarlet Brotherhood, Great Kingdom, and Iuz big villains. FR is considered a bit more consistently high powered and high magic, Greyhawk is very variable in tone and themes supporting both grounded D&D fantasy and gonzo high fantasy. My big criticism of 1e Greyhawk is not connecting the pantheons to the setting's theocracies, the intolerant Theocracy of the Pale is easy to infer to the followers of Pholtus of the Blinding Light, but a lot are not, the Archlericy of Veluna, The Prelacy of Almor, The See of Medegia, The Caliphate of Ekbir, for instance all have multiple plausible possibilities. Later 2e and 3e editions fill in these blanks with variable satisfaction in the results (The Baklunish being followers of "Al'Akbar," a Baklunish demigod not even mentioned in the 1e setting, for example). Kalamar is considered very grounded more realistic D&D with developed ethnic cultures (including for prominent humanoids like hobgoblins) and naming styles and geography. I wanted to get into it, particularly things like their Fantasy Africa continent and huge pantheon god book and the orc and hobgoblin sourcebooks, but it did not really inspire/engage me enough to actually do so. I enjoyed their 3.5 Monster book and a couple of the modules (the ones I own) a lot though. I own the 2e setting PDF as well but I could not tell you the differences between that and the 3e one.</blockquote>

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