Campaign setting recommendations

[Desdichado]

Those are just superficial similarities. In FR, they're blatantly ripped down to the last detail.

That's a big complaint of mine about Sovereign Stone, incidentally, as well. They're not only blatant, they advertise it! The back cover of the campaign setting book says something along the lines of "featuring Mongol dwarves and Japanese elves."

Tolkien, for example, did a great job with it. It's been said many times that the Rohirrim greatly resemble pre-Norman conquest Ango-Saxons. That's sorta true, but there are also some very big differences between the real and the fictional culture that cast the theory in doubt. Ergo, the culture resonates with us because of the similarities, but doesn't jar us out of the fantasy world with the too many similarities.

 

[Mystery Man]

Those are just superficial similarities. In FR, they're blatantly ripped down to the last detail.

Oh come ON! You cannot possibly be serious.

Tolkien, for example, did a great job with it. It's been said many times that the Rohirrim greatly resemble pre-Norman conquest Ango-Saxons. That's sorta true, but there are also some very big differences between the real and the fictional culture that cast the theory in doubt.

Yeah, there are huge similarities, because when Tolkien wrote the LoTR he did it to create a mythology for an England that didn't have one.

 

[apocalypstick]

Hmm... where have I seen the Mulhorandi pantheon before? It seems so familiar to me, for some reason... just can't seem to put my finger on it...


I think Kalamar is much more logically consistent of a setting than FR, and I think FR has more ideas to steal... ahem... liberate from their shackles of silliness... then Kalamar does. Each setting has its own strengths and weaknesses, even FR.

Take the best of both worlds. Homebrew. It's the choice of a new generation.

 

[Desdichado]

Words of wisdom from the make-up of doom! You're in Cincinnati? I should make it down to the next Ohio game day (if they have one again) and meet some of the Ohio ENWorld folks. I had a lot more fun than I expected when I went to Chicago, and I've been genuinely bummed that I've had to miss the last two Chicago gamesday.

 

[Pseudonym]

Other than the Campaign Setting and DM Screen (and possibly Players) are there any other Supplements you would recommend picking up.

I would suggest the Pekal Gazateer. Though it is intended for Living Kalamar, it provides a decent background for the principality, fleshing it out enough with plot hooks a plenty, without giving you everything. I ran my tragically short lived Kalamar campaign there.

If you do decide to base your game in Pekal, there are a few of Kenzer's published adventures set in that area, such as Deathright and two of the four adventures in Lands of Mystery, along with the interesting mini adventures i the back of the Pekal Gazateer.

 

[Orias]

Hmm... where have I seen the Mulhorandi pantheon before? It seems so familiar to me, for some reason... just can't seem to put my finger on it...

Or several of all D&D's deities, from any setting. If you remember, there was a little setting by the name of Planescape which gave the option for all powers to inflect their influence on just about any world, if they so willed it.

Mulhorand is Egypt. Read into the history of the Realms & you will see that they were gated over.

Elves, orcs, & dwarves aren't even native to Faerun, but came over through other planes.

The fact of the matter is that the stabs against Forgotten Realms are similar matters used for Kalamar. I think Kalamar's cultures are boring & extremely single-minded, but that's just me.

You are arguing "anthropological" standpoints for a setting that firstly has magic, thus throwing almost all sociological & anthropological rules out of the window, but secondly - has existed as a growing, human populated, recorded world for "longer" than humans have lived on Earth. You are arguing concepts from a real world setting & applying it to a place where divine beings walk the earth, people are struck down dead, lizards fly around & breath fire (if you want to get into anthropology & the likes of that, let's start discussing how reasonably impossible it would be to have an actual landscape that supports dragons & giants).

Forgotten Realms is very well done. Unfortunately it does have it's mish-mashed aspects to it, but none the less it is still far more detailed than any other setting.

 

[Kichwas]

I'm glad you found at least one statement you could attack.

The rest of yours didn't seem to even scratch at logic - but rather at an attempt to blindly rationalize away all of the severe problems in the design of FR. Most of them failed to look at the larger picture.

You pulled from a specific rather than addressing the whole, you drew up fictions, you attacked spelling rather than the point, you claimed 'it doesn't matter anyway and those never make sense', and so on.

BTW: trade routes do make sense - look at history and the availability of resources. The laws of supply and demand... Migration is shaped by like patterns. Take even a 50-mile out scratch at the atmosphere floating over the surface of sociology, anthropology, history, and political science and you can see this in blatant detail.

NONE of the geographical features on the FR map follow even the most basic of rules, not just one desert. Kalamar's timeline IS fixed - that's an official policy of the line. They add detail or past, but not future -no metaplot.

I can go on, but what's the point? FR breaks down at every angle. I've found nothing about FR that makes it a good setting. It's about as bad as they can possibly be built. It's only survived under the weight of novels, TSR branding, iconic NPCs, and the art. As well actually, the fact that many people just don't care about these things.

That may be because no publisher has ever dones a setting right, so we just don't know how people would react if they did, or again maybe most people really just don't care. The few that come close to being well done have never been -presented- well (short burst easy to digest blocks of writing, graphics, art, fiction lines, and branding), so they can't compete in the eye candy department.

Those are flaws of perception as much as actual flaws, though. Folks who couldn't give a flying fig for continental climatology likely don't find the arrangement of Faerun to be a flaw in the least. For example.

They are still flaws for they are incorrectly built. Many just either choose to ignore them or don't care.

7+7 does not equal 15. I may not care that it doesn't equal 15, but that doesn't make me listing it as 15 anything but an error.

 

[MarauderX]

Re: If I could rebut...

Any setting is easily scaleable to whatever level of magic you want. This particular line of reasoning has been shut down time and time again. But, keep going with it if you must.

I would have to say the FR is pretty hard to scale down without doing damage to how the whole place is set up. Just mentioning from experience, but I still steal a lot of ideas from the high-high-high-fantasy setting of FR.

If this were a poll, or a debate between FR and KoK my vote would be for the later. As this thread was originally asking for advice for a good setting I cannot convey how important it is to avoid FR as the first setting to run as a new DM. IMO.

Then again I can't wait for Warcraft to come out; but I am worried that it will try to capture all of the hack-n-slash of the games and not grow any of the embedded plots.

 

[Gothmog]

Originally posted by arcady:

I can go on, but what's the point? FR breaks down at every angle. I've found nothing about FR that makes it a good setting. It's about as bad as they can possibly be built. It's only survived under the weight of novels, TSR branding, iconic NPCs, and the art. As well actually, the fact that many people just don't care about these things.

Yep, I agree completely, and that is why I won't ever touch the Realms again. There is also the HUGE problem of the novels (would that I could blast the memories of reading the horrible Avatar books from my mind), and players who quote them as canon, then become irate if the DM does not follow them to the letter. FR was originally conceived by Ed Greenwood, but over the years there have been too many other contributers who added things in willy nilly, until it is a nonsensical and utterly ridiculous setting now. The huge logical inconsistencies that exist in FR are explained away as "because powerful magic did it", which IMO is an extremely weak excuse. And yes, logic matters as much in a fantasy world as it does in the real world- without logic and consquences that make sense, the continuity of the world becomes inconsistent with the facts.

Go with Kalamar, you won't be disappointed. Another good setting is Paradigm's Arcanis- very detailed and interesting history.

 

[rounser]

Placement of geological features in an unrealistic manner is the least of a typical campaign's suspension of disbelief problems, IMO. There are far bigger verisimilitude fish to fry than worrying about where the terrain props are arrayed around the adventure stage, IMO.