Disaffected and Affected Setting fans!

[ivocaliban]

Forgotten Realms


What hooked me...

What really hooked me about Forgotten Realms was the fact that it is so intertwined with the fantasy world in general. No other D&D setting has so many novels and video games to support it. Even if you've never picked up a d20, many fantasy fans and gamers know of Forgotten Realms. So, it was just general knowledge that brought me to Forgotten Realms, though I never plucked up the nerve to buy a sourcebook until the release of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (FRCS). That book simply amazed me. However...


What muddied the water...

There is so much information packed into the FRCS that I can't pick it up without feeling overwhelmed. For anyone whose followed Forgotten Realms for years this might not be a problem, but to those of us who were relatively new to the setting back in 2001 its like reading the CliffsNotes to War & Peace. You might get all the facts, but you don't always get the contexts and nuances of events. This made me think that running a campaign in Forgotten Realms would suffer from the same problem that I had when trying to run World of Darkness games...the metaplot was very difficult to keep up with without spending a lot of time and money to do so.


What broke the catoblepas' back...

Too many cooks and way too many ingredients. There's just too much to keep up with in Forgotten Realms for my liking. Furthermore, there are so many writers bringing so many new elements to the Realms that I never feel like I've got a handle on the situation. I like the fact that a world I enjoy has novels to support it, but I don't like feeling like I have to read novel after novel after novel just to keep up with what's going on.


Lost Hope...

I'm not keen on the future of Forgotten Realms. While the 4th edition changes might very well fix the problems I've mentioned above, I expect that they'll only reset them to zero...where it can all begin again. Furthermore, the vast changes to the world itself sounds like an interesting game, but it doesn't sound like Forgotten Realms. I wouldn't mind it as an alternate age or universe, but I don't like the idea of changing the very nature of a setting just to support a new edition.

 

[ivocaliban]

Eberron


Why I never took the bait...

Eberron looks to me like a gilded collage of leftover ideas. Its bombastic art style reminds me of World of Warcraft and its pulp-noir-steampunk-kitchensink mentality just doesn't appeal to me. While it does contain concepts I like, they are all mixed-up in a way that makes the individual flavors lose their pungency. To me, Eberron is the KFC Famous Bowl of rpgs. The ingredients are great, but putting them all together in one place just looks like a mess.


I've seen the future, brother...

If there's any setting that I think will succeed in the 4th edition it's Eberron. Despite the fact that it's not to my taste, I realize it has a lot of dedicated fans and is a progressive (rather than traditional) world. I would go so far as to say that 4th edition so far seems to be moving in a direction that's built around Eberron and the new style of gaming that comes with it. If I were making the switch to 4th edition, Eberron would be the setting I'd be watching very closely.

 

[Odhanan]

Does this apply to any setting, even non-D&D ones?

Forgotten Realms
What hooked me: AD&D's campaign set was cool, but what really hooked me was first Baldur's Gate, and then the release of Third ed's campaign setting which led me to Dlabraddath and its forums of myth-drannor.net (now sadly extinct).

Why I didn’t keep up: Too much stuff coming out. I am not lost to the setting though: I recently bought the Grand History of the Realms, for instance (which is an outstanding supplement, by the way). I just think that outstanding supplements like this need not be lost among a horde of average products.

Greyhawk
What hooked me: The feel of it. The weird, yet familiar medieval taste of gygaxian fantasy. I also started playing RPGs extensively on an hybrid AD&D ToEE campaign using some Glorantha deities. That helped a lot, I guess.

Why I didn’t keep up: I don't feel I "need" to keep up. Beyond the Gazetteer, Temple of Elemental Evil, a few modules here and there, I don't feel I "need" anything to play a satisfying Greyhawk game, so I don't bother.

Eberron
What hooked me: Love the flavor, the style different from other settings. It's a cool blend with lots of game possibilities.

Why I didn’t keep up: I'm still keeping up with it. I've actually never played the setting though. Sucks.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Forgotten Realms

What hooked me:
The fact that it was THERE was a major bonus. I'd been DMing for a while but having to grind out EVERYTHING from scratch. There just weren't any campaign settings to use. I didn't have much desire to get into Greyhawk at the time though. It didn't help that I never saw it for sale anywhere. Anyway, I was starting to DM full time and other DM's were abandoning their campaigns and just playing in mine even though I was still making some noob decisions. I wanted a setting to use. FR came along. I liked the maps a lot (big selling point with me, silly as it may be to some). I liked the other stuff I read. Waterdeep probably really sank the barb in. When I got those big maps of Waterdeep, in addition to the endless supply of supplements, etc. I had more than enough.

What lost me:
Playing in this same setting for 15+ years in campaign after campaign - not only my own but in those games where I was a player as well. No, I/we never covered everything there was to see and do in the Realms. We never got too far from Waterdeep, Dales, and Cormyr. But I was getting bored with it. I was also turned off that EVERY FREAKING INCH of that game world was being detailed. Sure, I didn't have to use it but they sure didn't have to develop it all either. Example - in the original boxed set it was specifically stated they would NOT develop Sembia. It would be untouched for DM's to do what they wanted with it. They went back on their word and what they did with it I didn't even find at all interesting which only compounded the crime. There were also the countless "discussions" about the overblown "Mary Sue" NPC's and Drizzt clones. Even though I ignored such things entirely in my own games I tired of seeing everyone else OBSESSED with proclaiming them BadWrongFun for them even existing in someone ELSES campaign. Then I started looking closely at that big map and finding all kinds of things about it that I didn't like and didn't make sense. I can handle scorching deserts in subarctic lattitudes - this is fantasy after all - but there were rivers going up and over hills and the mountains looked like they'd been sneezed onto the map in big globs rather than developed as mountain RANGES, and basically it all looked like it was spit out by a random generator rather than with any sense of development. About the time I was deep into completely rearranging the entire freaking continent I said, "I've had it with this place and I'm never coming back." Seriously - I swore I'd never run another game set in the Realms. I'd jump in as a player but even that wouldn't be by my own preference.

What kept me in it longer than I thought:
The FRCS, it being the only setting for 3E when I started a new campaign (and in which I nonetheless RADICALLY and arbitrarily altered the place), and no desire to burden myself yet with scratchbuilding an entire setting again.

It was not until Judges Guild finished their revisions of the Wilderlands and City State of the Invincible Overlord did I have a suitable replacement.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Spelljammer

What hooked me:
The ships. I'd played in a 1E game where our party once had a flying ship and there were a few others floating about the game world. It was fun though the DM eventually blew it up. Digging into that boxed set and looking at all those cards with the ships on them hooked me solidly. Despite... problems with the rules I moved a campaign I was running into Spelljammer for a while and the players loved it so much that they requested for years afterward that I run it again.

What lost me:
They never made it a setting of its own though it was SCREAMING to be one (and it needed to be a setting that disregarded other settings rather than connecting them). Plastering it onto EXISTING settings like the Realms or Greyhawk just screwed up everything in those ground-based games, especially if there were already an ongoing campaign there. They weren't built or EVER intended for the travel and communication capabilities of Spelljammers to exert their influence. Their solution - ignore the problem. On top of that the rules had holes - some of them quite humungous. Gravity needed much more detailed rules, particularly when gravity fields were at angles to each other and intersecting. The manner in which the spelljamming helms drained spellcasters was a pointlessly game-killing mechanism, and ship combat boiled down to WIN or DIE - for EVERY encounter. The first combat you won would make you stinking rich. Every encounter you won after that only made you richer and PC's rapidly assembled small fleets after upgrading to the largest, niftiest ship they wanted. But the first combat you lost - you lost EVERYTHING and then it was either Deus Ex Machina to keep going or start over. It was otherwise hell on jets.

What drove me further away:
The cheezy gonzo factor. It's already a very high-concept setting with flying ships in space. I liked the Giff because they fit the setting but penguin people and dozen VARIATIONS on Giant Hamsters? Spelljammer became a dumping ground for EVERY utterly whacked out, drug-induced monster, humanoid race, lame-ass joke concept or funky bizzarro location that anyone cared to shovel into the latrine that they treated it as. They couldn't even just use Orcs - no it had to be "Scro". They should have just added the "tums" as their little assistants. It's what derived from NOT giving it its own setting and its own concepts to FIT that setting - and ONLY that setting, not every other setting under the corporate banner plus the mushroom-influenced trash.

Why I WANT to revisit it:
It was just way too much fun to forget it. It's also just way too much work for just myself to fix it and revise it for SANE play. Maybe if I just took up hallucingenic drugs in a big way...

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Dragonlance:

What hooked me:

Tinker Gnomes. I first heard that the Gnomes in Everquest were inspired by the Gnomes from Dragonlance. I began by looking up stuff online about Dragonlance. Eventually, my brother bought Dragons of Autumn Twilight because a friend told him it was a good book. I soon picked it up as well and my love for Dragonlance pretty much took of from there. At firsy I just read W&H stuff, but then I soon picked up every Dragonlance novel I could get my hands on, and I am still reading a bunch of them.

What lost me:

Nothing, I am still very much into Dragonlance.



Spelljammer:

What hooked me:

Ships in space with all kinds of weird and wacky monsters.

What lost me: Nothing. I do not own any Spelljammer game supplements or novels. Though I wish I did.

 

[Anthelios]

Greyhawk
What hooked me: Sometime in the 90s I came across an in character journal of a necromancer named Korel and his exploits in Greyhawk. Combined with me being a young gamer and the "classic" feeling of Greyhawk really sold me on it. I grabbed everything I could, every supplement I could find, and dove in running many many games in it.

What lost me: Nothing ever lost me. I tried some other campaigns and I have made my own game worlds, but I always come back to Greyhawk with great memories. My current campaign is in Greyhawk (Although its on an "unexplored" continent).

The only problem I have with Greyhawk is its relative lack of support compared to the Realms (which im personally not a fan of). There is plenty of rich history and awesome detail that could be expanded upon that TSR, and then WotC has failed to act on. The Greyhawk Gazetteer was an excellent book, but was only half the book that the FR campaign setting book was that came out around the same time in 3.0.

 

[HelloChristian]

Greyhawk for 1e AD&D

What Hooked Me
It was a DM's playground. Make your own history. Take a few paragraphs describing a nation and make it your own.

What Lost Me
Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes. I felt as if my home had been burglarized.

What Got Me Back
The Living Greyhawk Gaze teer was so well written, I couldn;t resist. It's nice to kick it in Perrenland again.

 

[Dragonhelm]

SThey never made it a setting of its own though it was SCREAMING to be one (and it needed to be a setting that disregarded other settings rather than connecting them).

My own take is that it should first and foremost be a setting all its own, but it should have a section in the rules describing how to add Spelljammer to existing campaign worlds if the DM chooses. So the best of both worlds.

I know the SJ mini-game had some issues, but the one thing it did right was provide a setting.

 

[Turanil]

Dragonlance

What hooked me into the setting:
Quasi-medievalism, the knights of Solamnia, the orders of wizardry.

Why the setting lost me.
Krynn is a too small continent, it should be four or five times the size. Also, the following races were a deterrent to me: Kender, tinker gnomes, and Minotaurs. Then, I don't like Dragonlance past the Tales of the Lance era. I prefer to keep it in that era, a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy.