Favourite Fantasy Settings

[ExploderWizard]

Overall, it would be the old D&D Known World.

There is so much wacky and wild stuff to use alongside areas of more traditional fantasy trappings that make it a great place to run games in for any edition. I started running basic D&D campaigns there. I ran a GURPS fantasy swashbucker game set in Darokin, and now my current 4E campaign is taking place in Karameikos.

The place is so versatile. There are areas civilized enough to run an old school style fantasy campaign and other places that are perfect for a points of light campaign.

 

[howandwhy99]

Overall, it would be the old D&D Known World.

Do have a list of product material for this setting? I know my DM uses it pretty liberally, but leaves out most stuff from the gazetteers. I'm guessing it's mostly adventure module and Dragon magazine material before that?

 

[scruffygrognard]

Greyhawk (classic Pre-Wars stuff). It's open-ended enough to allow for heavy DM imput but has enough flavor to help inspire a DM.

 

[oni no won]

My favorite setting used to be FR and I still like it a lot. I think the 3rd ed FR book is the best settings book ever produced and now whenever I look at other settings books, I always compare them to this book.

While FR is still my go to kitchen sink fantasy world, it has been replaced with Iron Kingdoms by PrivateerPress.

IK just oozes flavor. I like their reimaging of some of the classic fantasy races such as ogrins (ogres) and the goblins (can't remember the IK terminology).

I like their interpretation of melding of steam tech with magic. Pure magic (outside of the elves maybe) is extremely rare and very dangerous.

The classes rock from race specific Fell Callers to WarCasters.

 

[theemrys]

I really liked FR in 1e and early 2e... but then it lost it to me... got a little too over the top.

I LOVED the Birthright setting. Didn't really use it for the regent side of things but a great place to adventure.

My current favourite is the Kingdom's of Kalamar. I got hooked on it when it was an official D&D setting and now am loving it for Hackmaster. To me it's a great setting that has a rich background, love the pantheon, and it's not "high magic" so I can add what I want and leave the rest out.

 

[Bold or Stupid]

Eberron - Love the Pulp fantasy vibe, and very cool races.
ShadowrunEarthdawn - Just great in depth b ackground that gives me room to move.
Kult - Serius head screw twist on reality.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Do have a list of product material for this setting? I know my DM uses it pretty liberally, but leaves out most stuff from the gazetteers. I'm guessing it's mostly adventure module and Dragon magazine material before that?

Material for this world was scattered all over the place; gazetteers, modules, magazine articles, and most recently websites. The classic B/X modules had info bits of it. CM1 had a good outline of the entire Norwold area. X4-5 outlined the whole Sind desert area and X9 was part adventure,part mini atlas for the Savage Coast.

I see the lack of strong central canon as a benefit. You can easily use parts of the world and ignore others. It is the buffet bar of D&D campaign worlds.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Azgulor]

My favorite setting for D&D is Forgotten Realms.

It's kind of weird though, I've never really been a fan of swords and sorcery fantasy novels except for rpgs.

That's ok as I'd place FR squarely in the High Fantasy end of the genre and not in the swords-n-sorcery area. Swords-n-sorcery usually has a trademark characteristic of magic being distrusted at best and corrupting at worst and commonplace magic items are rare or nonexistent. I'm sure exceptions can be found but the Realms is certainly magic-friendly.

 

[Wombat]

Let's see...

How about Earthsea, Middle Earth, the Urth of the New Sun, Camelot/Logres, HarnWorld, Nehwon, and Space: 1889 (the latter definitely not as a system, only as a setting).