Cool things you remember from some setting of choice

[Drowbane]

Planescape and Spelljammer was the glue that our primary 2e DM used to piece all the 2e settings we used together.

Masque of the Red Death was a very cool, underestimated setting. 1890s earth with Gothic overtones. Put that in the hands of a Sci-Fantasy loving 2e DM and you get a Planewalking party of adventurers who are sent to this alternate Prime to find the lost Red-Eye (faction of Fighter/Psionicists... if only Soulknives existed back then!). We didn't stay all that long, just long enough to...

1) Stop a menacing Phantom from getting its vengence on the Brittish Crown.

2) Be sent by the Crown to Brittish occupied Africa to investigate reports of "huge bugs killing villagers and eating brittish soldiers for breakfast" The six of us managed to slow the Thri-Kreen invasion long enough for the Brits to get thier stuff together.

3) Witness mind-controled brittish soldiers slaughter the Red Eye (who had been hiding out in the wilds of africa)... we arrived too late to prevent this. The Brits came out of control shortly afterwards. We were told by one of the dying Red Eye that thier children had been taken to the New World.

4) Pursue the Darklord of the Gith (Githyanki Red Eye who had abducted the children of the Red Eye with plans of raising his very own army) to New Hope, MA.

5) Spearheaded the Brittish Empire's revenge in the Sahara by going on a bug-hunt... eliminating the Kreen's lairs beneath the Sahara.

6) Had our final showdown with the Darklord of the Gith (near TPK, including the deaths of several dozen NPC soldiers) and managed to return the children of the Red Eye to Sigil.

One major NPC of note was a certain Hans Zoloft (or something like that), Pilot of a certain Spelljammer that was highly useful in getting around...

Ahh, good times. Think I'd be crazy in recreating these adventures in 3.X for my new group?

 

[Psion]

Published:

Planescape:
Portals. Factions. Sigil. Acheron (a plane with floating cubes).

Homebrew:

I had a GM who ran a game on a fantasy ringworld. It was pretty cool. On starting the campaign, the GM described how there was an arch in the sky built by the gods, and how our characters were never used to anything different than having the sun straight overhead, and the sun simply darkening at nighttime.

The campaign had a bunch of other cool curious little quirks. We re-discovered some builder technology once, including a tram that went under the ringworld. We fought an evil wizard who discovered how to use some ancient military aircraft. The dwarves mined a rubbery material that simulated plate tectonics. There was a kindly half-pegasus dragon. My character had an intelligent flying carpet (this was well before Disney's Alladin, mind you.)

 

[Clueless]

Acheron's been loads of fun in my current game.

 

[KenM]

I think The city of Coldroun(SP?) from Shackled City is a neat setting for a city. Inside a dead volcano.

 

[Turanil]

Playing a witch hunter in Warhammer fantasy was a blast.

I can believe it. Just reading it I want to play that.

 

[sckeener]

Here's one homebrew game I played in back in the early 90s (but the campaign had begun with other players in the 80s)

That GM's world was called Tellior. There were many facets that I liked. The DM told an interesting story....but I guess the proof of what I liked would be the concepts I stole way for other games....

one magic item in that world was binder stones. Basically you had an elemental bound to a stone. When I dragged the concept into my game, I had it just be monster summoning spells limited to one creature to keep a lid on the power.

the elementals usually bound in her game were pleasure and pain elementals. Basically humanoid shape elementals that looked like whatever summoned them. She got the concept for pleasure/pain elementals from Dragon Magazine issue #27 pg 8, Elementals and the Philosopher's Stone by Jeff Swycaffer

Also in that campaign, I had my first exposure to magical drinks....and ever after I have included them in my games....my personal favorite was a wine made from the blood of a destruction goddess imprisoned by a vampire lord. It could get undead drunk and kill mortals if they didn't make their fort save.

 

[Woas]

Sort of like Psion's situation, in a homebrew setting the world was on a mobius strip. That was very cool and I liked the idea a lot. Where the strip bent, you could look "up" and see green fields and villages going about their business...

 

[Aus_Snow]

The fact that every PC had a bit of divine blood in their ancestry in a friend's homebrew back when. And the craziness that ensued therefrom.

 

[Dog Moon]

I always liked the idea of Hollow World, where the inside was hollow and the core of the world was basically the sun. It was more difficult to tell directions, it never became dark. I don't remember many details about that setting, but the idea sounded kinda neat.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

The Lady of Pain.

Our first fight atop a lightning rail car in Eberron.

Fallen. She was an NPC in a homebrew, a snow elf paladin whose husband died and couldn't be resurrected. In anger, she turned against her god and became one of the most reviled blackguards both in the game world and among the PCs.

The time the Abyssal PC in my first Exalted game betrayed the other PCs and stole the unique warstrider they'd found and laid the smackdown on them all in like three rounds.

But my most reviled NPC was a lich in a Forgotten Realms game. The party freed her when they were 3rd level. They finally defeated her when they were 15th level. The bad part is that, after all that build-up, she was taken down by a single Arrow of Undead Slaying and a 1 rolled by me on my save. (sigh)

The Watcher. The single most hated bad guy I've ever come up with. He was a soul-slaver in a Wraith: The Oblivion campaign who specialized in dealing with the souls of children. He caused the PCs no end of trouble over a real-time period of like 4 years.