AD&D 2E Can anyone give me a rundown on Red Steel and other obscure D&D settings not mentioned in this video?

[Dire Bare]

Red Steel is a coastal setting, but didn't really involve ocean-going adventures . . . you could certainly do that, but it wasn't a focus of the setting. Jakandor and Council of Wyrms are island settings, but as with Red Steel, didn't have a focus on ocean-going adventure.

 

[Dire Bare]

Red Steel was an expansion of the Mystara line in its waning 2e years (ca. 1995-96), focusing on the coastal areas southwest of Karameikos and the Known World. They called this area the Savage Coast, and it was introduced mostly by Bruce Heard's Voyage of the Princess Ark columns in Dragon Magazine a few years earlier.

The Red Steel/Savage Coast had a total of 8 products produced for it, under TSR's Odyssey line, though some were only released as PDFs after the line was discontinued. I seem to recall these beiong released for free at some point by one of the creators, but I can find no evidence now to back that up.

It had soem engaging ideas and a different sort of approach to adventuring, and it would have been interesting to see how it developed if given enough time/air. But alas.

Red Steel's "Savage Coast", like the "Known World" of the main Mystara setting, has a hodge-podge of nations loosely based on real-world cultures. That's either going to bug you or excite you . . . IMO, they are awkwardly placed next to each other without rhyme or reason, but some of the individual cultures are pretty awesome. One of my favorites are the folk of Herath, who raise spiders and . . . well, campaign secret!

One of the main hooks of the setting is the "Red Curse", which taints the soil, plants, animals, and people a red color. It also causes severe magical mutations, turning animals and peoples into monsters (or monsters into weirder monsters). The Red Curse can be somewhat controlled by wearing a special metal mined and smithed in the region called cinnabryl (if I remember correctly) and allows PCs to effectively change their curse into super-powers. It's pretty cool, but adds more PC options to track and manage, and hasn't been (officially) updated for D&D 5E.

 

[Dire Bare]

Jakandor was three books; Jakandor Island of War, Jakandor Isle of Destiny, and Jakandor Land of Legend.

Jakandor is a large island with two warring cultures, a culture of barbarian warriors and a culture of necromancers. The necromancers are interesting, because they aren't your garden-variety evil despots, but rather raise the dead of their own people to act as servants and warriors. Both cultures see themselves as the good guys and the other culture as the bad guys and each gets a book, with the third book bringing it all together.

Fun trivia fact, the setting was originally going to be called "Steel and Bone" and had a cool logo all worked up before being changed to just "Jakandor".

 

[Dire Bare]

Council of Wyrms was originally released as a boxed set, then later re-released as a hardcover book. I'm fairly certain the content was mostly the same in both versions.

The setting is a archipelago of islands populated by dragons and their servant peoples, including realms ruled by all the major chromatic and metallic dragons. Cultures of elves, humans, and others live on the island as servants to the dragons. This is, I think, where "half-dragons" were first introduced as PC options, which later evolved into the dragonborn of 4E and 5E.

Most importantly, the setting included rules for PC dragons!

 

[Lidgar]

Another one to consider is Zakhara, the continent/region for the Al-Qadim setting (part of the Forgotten Realms). The Golden Voyages boxed adventure focuses on seafaring adventures in particular.

 

[LordBP]

Another one to consider is Zakhara, the continent/region for the Al-Qadim setting (part of the Forgotten Realms). The Golden Voyages boxed adventure focuses on seafaring adventures in particular.

There are a couple of Al-Qadim items in the link I provided before.

Corsairs of the Great Sea and Caravans