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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SHARK" data-source="post: 189986" data-attributes="member: 1131">Greetings!Well, I honestly prefer "Homebrew" campaign worlds. My own world, Thandor, has been in play for over 14 years now, and some of it goes back to 24 years! It's incredible the level of detail that I have achieved with it. The adventures have been fantastic and just great through different campaigns, through the years. I made my own world from scratch, with influences from many diverse sources. Most importantly, my own imagination. Thandor is roughly the size of the planet Jupiter, with vast seas and oceans, and many different continents. The world is vast enough to defy complete and absolute description. This certain "roughness" and ambiguity has had the wonderful effect of allowing me to organically grow and fine-tune the world over the years, and yet, it all seems quite seamless. This enhances the verissimilitude and depth of the world, and causes the least amount of friction when new ideas, races, religions, or what have you needs to be included in the world. This rich level of diversity has allowed an almost limitless creativity on my part, and has been immensely satisfying. This unparalleled level of rich detail and creative freedom stands in stark contrast to any published game world. Thus, while it's nice to mine other campaign settings for ideas and stuff, my homebrew remains really essential, and the best.From a consumer's point of view, I can really buy whatever supplements that I like, with absolutely no worries over whether or not it will conflict with what I've done, and so on. I really am free from what any "canon" might say. Oh, and certainly, I'm free from whatever "rules-lawyers" might whine about, or what someone has read in one or ten different novels. All of that nonsense is almost entirely irrelevant. No person alive knows the details of my campaign world the way I do. That can be an important factor, even essential, depending more so on what kind of players that you game with. Still, at the end of the day, "Homebrew" campaigns I think are the way to go.Of the published campaign worlds, I shall always remain a fan of Greyhawk. Greyhawk just rocks! Scarred Lands is interesting, but to be honest, there was too much stuff not available, and yet to be available, really, to do what I would like to do. But Scarred lands has balls for doing some unusual things, and having the courage to proceed with certain themes and styles that the industry has really been sluggish or apprehensive in embracing. This, combined with a special appeal, and a certain *snap* makes Scarred Lands interesting, despite a few problems, as noted. Other than that, the world of Erde sounds interesting. I'm not sure why they haven't gotten much press, though. They have done some really interesting stuff, and they have used some really good themes in several products, and in various elements throughout their stories. Of the current stuff, that would be probably the best selection.Of Forgotten Realms, well, to be honest, I ran several campaigns back in the day when Forgotten Realms was just a single dark grey box, with some maps, and two campaign booklets. Yes, it was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> But, *in those days*, I think many will agree with me, Forgotten Realms was special. It had *snap*, and *mystery* TSR really screwed that special feel up, and it really has never returned. Yes, the current edition of FR is good, it's certainly an improvement over the 2nd Edition of FR, and it even has many cool things that the Old Grey Box never had, don't get me wrong. Still, though, that special feel is gone, never to return. It just isn't the same. So, I think while FR has improved, and has many bells and whistles, it still has many salient problems, to my mind. Old school Dark Sun was pretty special though. It had a certain feel to it as well. But they screwed that up as well, and it's all ashes, blown to the wind now. So, I think, there it is.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Semper Fidelis,SHARK</blockquote>

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