Campaign setting recommendations

[Orias]

Another option is the Dangerous Denizens monster book, if you like monster books. The creatures include geographical ranges superimposed on a map of the world, which could be useful. You should also at least take a look at the Atlas on the shelf if you don't already know much about it. It's a one-of-a-kind book.

The essentials are the setting book and to a lesser extent the player's guide. To be honest, I think you could run a fine campaign with just the setting book.

Actually, the KoK Atlas book is one of the most impressive books I have seen.

I never stated FR vs. KoK, all I was stating was my opinion on FR, & why I believe it to be the best Prime setting created. It IS well thought out. Just because different people worked on it, & it got sloppy here & there, doesn't mean that the overall bulk to the setting - the workings of magic, the history of the world, the Pantheons, & all such things aren't designed well.

 

[StumpwaterJack]

Are there plans for a 3.5 KoK DMs Screen?

According to Kenzer Co's release schedule, it's due in September. I'm looking forward to it myself

SJ

 

[Faraer]

I'm a big Realms fan, and it's clear that TSR's adding on of Earth-analogue nations to Ed's Realms (which don't use Earth analogues) is bad worldbuilding. I also think the Realms-shattering event novels -- whether the chaos of the 1990s (1360s DR) or the committee-planned 2000s (1370s DR) have hurt the setting. (It's not a matter of novels being canonized: everything published for the Realms has always unambiguously been canon barring specific exceptions such as the Double Diamond Triangle Saga.) But the swords & sorcery charm and deep, distinctive consistency of mode of Ed's Realms, rooted in his extraordinarily broad reading and eccentric imagination, shines through even now. It's a shame that so many of the carefully crafted underpinnings of the Realms (economic and magical and social and sexual) are left implicit and so subject to confusion and proliferating canards (and sometimes contradiction in careless published products).

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

ya know, I hate to say this, but it is really hard for me to strictly identify the horde with Mongols.

I mean from the perspective of non-Hordes a horde is a horde is a horde. Does anyone really know of a game produced by a developed nation where you could honestly tell the difference between the Turks and the Huns?

I just don't think it is likely that we ever going to see anything that even attempts to approximate the effect of a horde without it being straight up Vanilla.

I love the Mongols and gobble up as much of their history as I can, and there just a way in which the FR horde seems specifically Mongol.

 

[Orias]

My opinion is that the Realms are well-designed. Yes, 3e Realms are getting pretty silly. Yes, there have been many inconsistancies. Yes, some of the novels ruin the flavor of the setting. Yes Wizards is blatantly going against canon with many of their releases. Yes, TSR threw on stupid things such as Matizca being America. But the fact is, through all of this - the change in flavor of a dark, wilderness-filled, ethical-clashing world to a more "good triumphs! look out our uberNPCs!", through it seeming like the Realms has the "internet" (that's the only way I can describe how I feel like cultures relate to each other in 3rd ed Realms), to Wizards talking about Time Travel, to the few authors who went against canon or the good intentions of Ed Greenwood - the Realms has been an entity for many, many years. There has always been central aspects to it, & the producers of the Realms have had their hand in many more changes & "metaplot" in the setting than not. Although I don't like 3rd ed Realms is going, I don't think the past two years or so entirely degates the many years of a beautifully designed setting.

 

[Mystery Man]

I just simply ignore Kara-tur, Maztica, and Al Quadim. It's never been Realms material as far as I'm concerned. I certainly hope WoTC has the good sense to never reprint any of that material. Ever.

 

[Orias]

I thought Al Quadim was pretty alright. Kara-Tur is alright as an underveloped concept, but I absolutely cannot stand Maztica.

 

[Faraer]

Maztica is a total white elephant, detritus from a novel trilogy which didn't add to the Realms and was a much less interesting story than that of the real conquistadores (same problem as with The Mage in the Iron Mask and Once Around the Realms). The Al-Qadim products are very good -- assuming you want a campaign setting based on Hollywood Arabia -- but neither setting benefited from their attachment to the Realms, which already had an Arabian-influenced region. Rick Swan's pseudo-Inuit that he put on the Great Glacier are garbage. Douglas Niles's Moonshae Isles, which took the place of Ed's original Earthsea-like archipelago, are a better fit, if only because the culture was closer to that of the core Realms and could be more easily fudged (as in FA1 Halls of the High King) to stand out a bit less jarringly).

I had an argument with Jim Lowder on another board about Ed's Realms vs the TSR/WotC Realms, and Jim -- who ran the book department for a while in the 90s -- weighed in in favour of the latter without telling me exactly where the supra-Greenwood consistency lay or why that version was better.

I think the reasons not to use the Realms are if you don't like the taste of their core, which is fair enough, or if you don't want to have to wade through this diversity of material that veterans can identify clearly but which is very opaque to newcomers, which unfortunately may be fair enough too.

Here, by the way, is the text that best sums up what the Realms is about.

 

[Mystery Man]

As I was reading your post I was thinking of linking that very same page.

 

[apocalypstick]

Whee! That was fun.

FR fans - I love ya.
Kalamar fans - I love ya.
Homebrewers - I love ya just a little bit more. But that's cool, right?

In the court of opinion, everyone is right and everyone is wrong at the same time. And that's that. Suck it up; move on.