Best D20 non-WotC Campaign Setting?

[Bluemoon]

I DM and play D&D 3rd edition using the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I have never played in settings other than those of Abeir-Toril (Faerun, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, Maztica). I am now ready to try out and expand into other campaign settings and wish to ask for your advice and thoughts.

I am looking for new campaign settings that offer informative and diverse sourcebooks, accesories, and adventures. I am looking primarily for new lands, races, peoples, cultures, and civilizations to explore as opposed to new rules/features like classes, skills, monsters, feats, spells etc. Although, if these campaign settings provide such new rules/features then I would consider them gravy and an extra incentive to try them out.

I would like these campaing settings to be easily played out of the box using the core D20 D&D rules and I would be discouraged to try any settings that contained house rules or innovations that stray too far from the core D20 D&D system.

I am mostly interested in European, Middle-Eartern, Asian, Native-American like campaing settings, with human/demi-human populations. I am looking for medieval-adventure-fantasy-warfare-political type settings appropiate for the D&D game and not for modern-science-spy-miniature-horror type settings. I would like settings that have a good selection of accessories, sourcebooks, and adventure modules, whether in print or in electronic format, from publishing companies that are committed to continue supporting their settings with future products. Price is not an issue.

Although I have not bought them or read them, by the number of books available for them in my local hobbie shop, I see that the Kingdom of Kalamar and the Scarred Lands campaing settings seem to have good support and diverse/informative products; so I am leaning towards trying them out. What are your thoughts on these settings and what others would you suggests and how any of them differ from the Forgotten Realms?

Thank you for your comments and suggestions.

P.S. This is only my second post so be gentle

 

[dave_o]

Wheel. Of. Time. d20.

You'll love it.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Rokugan's great too.

 

[Technik4]

You may want to look at Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, its coming out this summer and proves to have a lot of "new" cultures as well as new ways of playing the game.

From what others have said, I can recommend Scarred Lands setting.

Finally, I have had a chance to play (albeit, only a little) in the hosted Dusk setting here at Enworld. Its free and contains a wealth of cultural material.

Technik

 

[Morpheus]

1a) Iron Kingdoms by Privateer Press

1b) Midnight by Fantasy Flight Games

 

[Ashy]

Oathbound, baby!

casts summon Nightfall
(he'll tell you Scarred Lands, methinks...)

 

[Nightfall]

Obviously I'm not the most unbiased sort when it comes to Scarred Lands, but what I feel draws a lot of gamers (and DMs) is the fact the land is new. I don't just mean "oh it's a new setting". It's new in the fact a LOT of changes has happened, and that leaves a wide gap/opening for players to make changes and thus affect the world. Also unlike some others, we don't have "mega continents". Each of the continents is self-contained and can work well as it's own setting. Termana is all about jungles, nature spirits and a kind of "Lost World" feel. Asherak is more of a high Asian-Arabic feel with city states dedicated to one of the eight major gods/goddesses of the Scarred Lands. Ghelspad is more of you "wide variety European style" adventuring.

I also feel the way it differs from FR is two fold. One, you don't have a wide variety of people with easy access to magic weapons, magic armors, and other more common FR things. (This isn't to say you can't have them, just harder to come by and mass produce.) Also again touching on the theme of magic, the division between clerics and druids is easier to deal. Druids deal with "nature" and thus often have patrons/Titans they find common ground with. Clerics are patrons of GODS. One other interesting aspect, is that sorcerers have bloodlines, wizards are the true learners of the lore. (Plus the fact, there's no regulator of arcane magic. This means you can go wild with effects, strange magical places, etc)

So that's my spiel. I will say the other suggestions are fine. But it's all a matter of opinion and thus I feel Scarred Lands has a lot to offer both DMs and players.

 

[darkbard]

i would enthusiastically second a vote for the iron kingdoms [privateer press] for their rich and innovative setting [alternative races like nyss [winter] elves, gobbers, trollkin, ogrun; firearms and "steampunk"-esque technology [while still retaining an overwhelmingly sword and sorcery feel]; rich political landscape; a compelling adventure series [the witchfire trilogy]] but i think you'll be frustrated, like many other fans, by their lack of product output. i mean, they still haven't even published the campaign guide! however, if you change your mind and are willing to do a little more work than playing it right out of the box or can wait the few more months until the campaign guide is released, you could hardly do better as far as something different that still retains many of the rich elements of FR.

 

[Nightfall]

Oathbound, baby!

casts summon Nightfall
(he'll tell you Scarred Lands, methinks...)

Ask and yea shall recieve! But yeah Oathbound has a lot going for it too, if you like a nice mix of Planescape and Ravenloft.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Hmmm... For me, it's a tie between Oathbound and Midnight, with Scarred Lands close behind.