Most complete D20 Non-WotC Campaing Setting?

[Bluemoon]

I DM and play D&D 3rd edition using the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I have never played in settings other than those of Abeir-Toril (Faerun, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, Maztica). I am now ready to try out and expand into other campaign settings and wish to ask for your advice and thoughts.

I am looking for new campaign settings that offer informative and diverse sourcebooks, accesories, and adventures. I am looking primarily for new lands, races, peoples, cultures, and civilizations to explore as opposed to new rules/features like classes, skills, monsters, feats, spells etc. Although, if these campaign settings provide such new rules/features then I would consider them gravy and an extra incentive to try them out.

I would like these campaing settings to be easily played out of the box using the core D20 D&D rules and I would be discouraged to try any settings that contained house rules or innovations that stray too far from the core D20 D&D system.

I am mostly interested in European, Middle-Eartern, Asian, Native-American like campaing settings, with human/demi-human populations. I am looking for medieval-adventure-fantasy-warfare-political type settings appropiate for the D&D game and not for modern-science-spy-miniature-horror type settings. I would like settings that have a good selection of accessories, sourcebooks, and adventure modules, whether in print or in electronic format, from publishing companies that are committed to continue supporting their settings with future products. Price is not an issue.

Although I have not bought them or read them, by the number of books available for them in my local hobbie shop, I see that the Kingdom of Kalamar and the Scarred Lands campaing settings seem to have good support and diverse/informative products; so I am leaning towards trying them out. What are your thoughts on these settings and what others would you suggests and how any of them differ from the Forgotten Realms?

Thank you for your comments and suggestions.

P.S. This is my first post so be gentle

 

[teitan]

Scarred Lands dude

JAson

 

[midknight12]

I would suggest Soveriegn Stone d20. It has races based on all the cultures that you are interested in. Plus, it is supported and partially written by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and Don Perrin. While the spell system is different, it is really easy to pick up and a rather cool spell system at that. I like it alot.

I hope this helps
David

 

[haiiro]

Kingdoms of Kalamar hits every single point that you mentioned in your post: more background than crunch, easily playable with core rules, political and earthlike, a good amount of support and info-heavy supplements.

Scarred Lands has a much more fantastic feel, and doesn't meet some of your criteria -- although it is very well-supported, and there is a lot of background info crammed into its supllements. It diverges from the core rules, is (overall) not focused on politics, and includes a lot of crunch.

I don't run either setting, but I've bought and looked at books from both lines.

(Edit: typo.)

 

[s/LaSH]

It's not well-supported in terms of adventures and game rules, but for sheer detail I couldn't pass up medieval Europe. I tweaked it a little, putting in elves and gnolls and stuff, and increased the default magic level, but it's amazing how much weird stuff you can find for the setting.

For details on the changes I made, you can always visit my site (they're chronicled in webcomic form).

Although this sounds really tongue-in-cheek, it's true. Europe's got depth in spades, and combined with D&D archetypes... my group thought it was quite special.

 

[NeuroZombie]

Kalamar all the way!

 

[trancejeremy]

As much as I like Sov. Stone, it's not the most complete setting in the world. AFAIK, it's only got one regional sourcebook, and that is in the far past (Old Vinagael, IIRC). I also had a hard time getting a feel of the setting until I read the novels (of which there are only two, the third should be released soon, I hope)

Scarred lands and Kalamar are probably the most complete.

I don't know much about Scarred lands. I just have the Rituals & Relics book, plus one of the city books. It's pretty interesting. Seems somewhat epic.

Kalamar is generally a bit more low powered, at least in the products I have. The world was developed using Kenzer's own game system, then converted to D&D, so there are some oddities in some of the earlier products (and some logical problems, I think). But it's good.

The original setting book was very very text heavy (no crunchy bits at all), but they later released a player's book full of crunchy stuff.

 

[Blacksad]

L5R and 7th Sea got their rules updated to d20.

With those two you have a large selection of old books with lots of fluff (those done before the update) usable with any system. Plus very good book for the current system (well, the swashbuckling books aren't that good).

For Rokugan/L5R:

Core books: Oriental Adventures (Classes, Prestige Classes, Spells, Magic Items, Monster);
Rokugan (Classes, Prestige Classes, Spells, History, Clans Overview, Geography);
Monster of Rokugan: monsters
Magic of Rokugan: Spells

Expansion: Way of the Samurai, Ninja, Shugenja: school/origin/backround for all kind of character;
Fortunes and Winds: Cosmologie;
Secret of the Lion, Mantis, Phoenix, etc..: map, plot hook, in depth history of each clan

Old books: Way of the Lion, etc... Description of each clan; Bearer of Jade and Shadowland book: descrition of the land and inhabitant of the shadowland: the monsters of the setting.

For Swashbuckling Adventures/7th Sea:

Well take a look at AEG website

www.alderac.com

 

[jonrog1]

Scarred Lands. The city books are fantastic, and each has a distinctly different campaign feel. There's an awful lot of politics mixed in there, just not kept front and center.

 

[Assenpfeffer]

Kalamar, while not what I'd call innovative or original in any way, is a very solid setting, and one I'd reccommend. It's well-developed, reasonably logical and consistent, and pretty detailed. It's also well-supported - as trancejeremy points out, the Kalamar core book is all setting, with no rules at all. The Player's Guide is almost all setting-specific crunchy stuff, and is also well-done. And the adventures are generally excellent.

Scarred Lands, while a decent enough setting, doesn't really grab me. I think it's a good setting, though - don't get me wrong. It is also well-supported, but is more prone to setting-specific rules than is Kalamar.

The d20 Rokugan stuff is very good, though there are more balance issues the farther you stray from the core Rokugan books (i. e. Oriental Adventures and AEG's Rokugan book.) I much prefer the d20 mechanics to the old L5R rules system.

The 7th Sea setting (in Swashbucking Adventures) is IMO utter garbage, a poorly-concieved and sloppy historical pasteup of random stuff slapped together with no regard for logic or verisimillitude.

The truly great RPG settings (Harn, Tekumel, Talislanta) don't fit your criteria, since they have little currently available material, and are not easily adaptable to d20 - Harn beacuse it's a very low-magic setting, and the others because they have weird stuff that can't be simulated in d20 without developing some new material. There is d20 material for Harn and Tekumel on the net, more than enough to use those settings. I believe a d20 Harn guide can be found on Columbia Games' home page (or is linked from it.)