Fluff only campaign settings? (Now with a comprehensive list!)

[Voadam]

I think there is a new talislanta setting book that is systemless as well.

 

[Voadam]

Here you go:

http://www.gwenthia.org/wiki/pmwiki.php

[Edit: Gwenthia, IMHO, has a leg up on some commercial settings in terms of presentation -- it ain't WotC good, but it's far from second rate.]

Thanks, I'll check it out later.

 

[jdrakeh]

I don't know, it isn't bad or anything, but I greatly dislike 3D art for campaign settings. Also, why did they do the PDF on a gray background? Its like they don't want me to read it or something. There's no way I'll burn through that much ink to print it out. Sad too. It looks interesting. I'll read some of it, but I can't stare at a screen very long. I already do 8 hours a day at work and I get enough migraines.

It looks good in greyscale (indeed, it's easier to read in greyscale than in color). Most commercial printers can get the job done for .07 per page, thus the final print will cost you less than $10 -- significantly less than it will cost you in ink on your home printer. If you have an interest in it, that's the route I'd go (in fact, that is the route I went).

 

[jdrakeh]

Me neither. I'll have to check these out.

A party from Mongoose turned me onto the fact that the Glorantha book was systemless. I flipped through the Lankhmar book at the FLGS and didn't see any rules in it.

 

[JVisgaitis]

A party from Mongoose turned me onto the fact that the Glorantha book was systemless. I flipped through the Lankhmar book at the FLGS and didn't see any rules in it.

Systemless seems to be the new trend. I'll have to pop in a gaming store this weekend and see if they have it.

 

[kensanata]

I recently bought the first two packages of the Final Redoubt Press' Echoes of Heaven campaign. Each package consists of a campaign or setting book, all fluff, and an adventure (which naturally has stat blocks). I haven't played it yet, but I absolutely love the synergy. The setting gives you the stuff you need to know when improvising, and the adventure illustrates how the background actually affects your players. And the adventures come with stat blocks in different flavors (d20, Hero, Rolemaster, and HARP).

 

[JVisgaitis]

Alright, so I'm really digging the idea of fluff only campaign settings and I'm trying to create a comprehensive list as you can see from the first post. Can anyone add to this?

 

[Daebryn]

Well, if you want to go back a ways, the main books in both the 2nd Edition AD&D Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (A Grand Tour of the Realms) and the Revised Dark Sun Campaign Setting (The Wanderer's Chronicle) are both pretty much nothing but fluff. The Dark Sun boxed set actually split the fluff and crunch between two books which I always liked.


Also a lot of the older Earthdawn books were between 90 to 100% fluff. Most of the time, the actual game rules were relegated to the last chapter in the book. A couple of them have monster and NPC stats sprinkled throughout though.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Anyone ever hear of The Player's Guide to Kairn? Apparently it was written Robin Laws and is supposed to be systemless. My Google Fu isn't turning up much...

 

[Daebryn]

I don't know how I forgot it since I played in two different campaigns set there, but The World of Khoras is pretty detailed and is completely systemless.

Of course its entirely online without any PDFs to download but its a pretty good setting that's been around for a while (10 years now).