Looking for Recommendations for a High Fantasy Campaign Setting

[Aus_Snow]

Dawnforge, Oathbound or Eberron.

 

[Woas]

The Diamond Throne from the Arcana Unearthed/Evolve game would be my suggestion.

Unfortunately though, Arcana Evolved books are hard to come by. I think they've stopped printing them.

 

[S'mon]

If you want Wahoo, OTT stuff, Wilderlands is good for a Swords & Sorcery feel. It's actually very different from standard high fantasy worlds.

If by High Fantasy you mean Tolkien, Donaldson type stuff, there's Midnight.

 

[Derro]

Talislanta

I can't speak for the quality of this rules set. It is a d20 adaptation of an older setting and from what I've seen it's usable but buggy. However, if you take the concepts of this game you will have the highest fantasy you've ever played. The setting as a whole resembles standard pseudo-medieval Europe not at all.

I've used this setting in many games and had it described as fantasy Star Wars, Darksun without the crap (not my words), the anti-Tolkien, and a variety of other colorful descriptors.

The original game is in it's 5th edition and there is material available for adaptation with a little work. You can't beat the price in the above link. 75% off the original selling price is pretty good and worth it for what I've seen of the product.

And it's got windships.

 

[The Cardinal]

Wilderlands is great for old school sword&sorcery, Áereth (DCC Classics) is great for D&D (and without metaplot), Dawnforge is great for legendary high fantasy, Midnight is great for very dark & gritty but still "tolkienesk" fantasy.

 

[Rugult]

It really depends on what your wording of "High Fantasy" translates to.

If you're looking for something vastly different from Greyhawk and the Realms, but still having the same DnD flavor, I would suggest either Eberron or the Iron Kingdoms.

Eberron has a very classic DnD feel but has various things taken to their logical conclusions. Magic becomes technology for the most part, with the invention of elemental airships, magic trains, and other technological inventions made with the help of magic.

The Iron Kingdoms is an opposite to Eberron in some respects; technology is aided by magic (instead of technology being magic). Imagine steam powered armor with magically enhanced weapons, actual non-magic steam trains and printing presses, and finally giant magically controlled steam powered robots.

Both of these settings have a 'different' view of many classic races such as Elves and Dwarves. Eberron tries to fit all races in with a twist, while the Iron Kingdoms only has some standard races and fills it in with several new ones (gobbers, ogrun, trollkin).

 

[DragonLancer]

Dawnforge would be my recommendation.

 

[Desdichado]

It really depends on what your wording of "High Fantasy" translates to.

It does indeed, and lacking any subsequent clarification, I'm going to assume that you mean the actual, "textbook" definition of high fantasy, as described right here.

In my opinion, that rules out settings like Iron Kingdoms and Eberron which, although I love them dearly, I wouldn't consider high fantasy in the traditional sense. It also rules out the Wilderlands, which—despite being called officially The Wilderlands of High Fantasy—seem to have a very strong Sword & Sorcery vibe, not a high fantasy one.

If you want something different or non-vanilla, I think that things like HarnWorld (fantasy with a strong emphasis on verismilitude, unmatched in that regard by any other setting currently in print),

I'd also throw The Kingdoms of Kalamar into the ring here. Hârn is almost extreme in this regard, and therefore abandons some of the default D&D assumptions, which Kalamar retains. To use an analogy, if deciding that focusing on verisimilitude and "realism" were like getting rid of animal products, Kingdoms of Kalamar would be the vegetarian setting, while Hârn would be the much more strict Vegan setting. Plus, it hasn't been thrown out there yet and it definately should; where are all the Kalamar advocates who usually swarm on these types of threads by now?

 

[Elf Witch]

Hobo beat me to it. I am going to recommend Kingdoms of Kalamar.

It is my favorite published setting for high fantasy. It is different than Greyhawk and the Realsm in that there are no high level NOCs running around. A lot of the important NOCs are not stated out allowing the DM the freedom to do so in a way that fits his game.

I like the static timeline once you start playing the world becomes yours the puplished world will not under go changes like the Realms have.

When we play we always use the variant language rules. Which I like for the realism it adds in that not every person speaks common.

The game has some excellent modules and some really good place books though you don't need them. All you really need to play is the campign setting book.

 

[Elodan]

How "high" fantasy we talking? Do you mean airships (aka bacon, everything tastes better with bacon), magic trains that work like maglev trains, and golems as player characters (Eberron)? Or more like a fully detailed planar city (City of Brass, Necromancer Games)? Or something that stays true to the traditions of Greyhawk while having a completely different take (Pathfinder Chronicles, Paizo Publishing).

I hear the first two are great; I don't own anything of them, but people I have talked to love them. The third, I highly recommend. While Paizo's flagship product is their adventure path, they do publish stand alone setting material and this fall they will be putting out player products. And if you're thinking of going 4E, the Campaign Setting and Gazetter are suppose to have very little crunch in them (so should be relatively easy to convert over).

While bacon does make everything better, we looked at Eberron (I have the book) and while we like parts of it we felt the magic as technology was a bit too outside what we're looking for.

We're looking for something in the traditions of Greyhawk and the Realms but with a different take. We're still going to play a campaign in Greyhawk (which is low fantasy) but I'm looking for something new for mine and the Realms are loosing their shine. I was someplace new for us to explore.