D&D General Official Campaign Setting Roll Call

[ccs]

Well, you're not wrong....
(The info below can be found here: The Keep on the Borderlands - Wikipedia)

Wikki: When The Grand Duchy of Karameikos edition of the Gazetteer series was published, the Keep was given a specific location in the Known World of Mystara, in the Atlan Tepe Mountain region in northern Karameikos.

Wikki: A sequel was released in 1999, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands for 2nd edition AD&D. The original B2 publication was generic in terms of setting, while the 1999 Return module placed the Keep in Yeomanry, making it a canonical location in the World of Greyhawk. The placement of the Keep in Greyhawk did not match many details in the sequel, such as several non-Greyhawk deities, nations, and peoples. At least two of the non-player character descriptions refer to details from the Mystara setting rather than Greyhawk.

Wikki: In September 2010, the module was re-released for D&D 4th Edition by Wizards of the Coast for use in the weekly D&D Encounters sessions. Like the original, this revised module was designed for use with the contemporaneously released Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game boxed set for D&D Essentials, which is oriented towards the beginning player. This time, The Keep on the Borderlands is set in the D&D base world of the Nentir Vale, in an area known as the Chaos Scar.

There's also the 2001 novel that's set in Greyhawk.




Once again, not wrong....
(See: The Isle of Dread - Wikipedia)

Wikki: The adventure was loosely based on King Kong,[1] and came with a fairly detailed (for its time) map of a setting then called the Known World,[1] showing at least fifteen distinct nations on the mainland to the north, as well as much of the Sea of Dread in which the Isle of Dread could be found.[4] These nations each received a paragraph or so of description near the beginning of the module.

The Sea of Dread is due south from Ierendi & The Minrothad Guilds. The Isle is part of an archipelago of islands, the name of wich escapes me.

In other works (Again, see:The Isle of Dread - Wikipedia)
Wikki: The Isle is also a minor encounter area in the later adventure Lathan's Gold,[13] and receives some further mention in several later D&D products such as the Poor Wizard's Almanac series.

Wikki: Issue No. 114 of Dungeon magazine features an update on the Isle of Dread as a Greyhawk setting, a remake-sequel to The Isle of Dread entitled Torrents of Dread,[14] and a poster-style map of the island, as well some smaller surrounding islands.[4]

Wikki: In this update, the island was located in the Densac Gulf, a region bordered by the Azure Sea to the north, the Pearl Sea to the south, the Amedio Jungle to the west, and Hepmonaland to the east. This large expanse of ocean contains several island chains, one of which is the Isle of Dread itself. The update details a kopru plot that destroyed the city of the original Olman settlers through the power of a giant black pearl imbued with the influence of Demogorgon, the demonic god of the kopru. The isle has become a mad collection of kopru, other aquatic races, demonic beings, dinosaurs, and savage Olman natives.[15]

Wikki: In the announcement for Dungeon's Savage Tide Adventure Path, Erik Mona mentioned that the Isle will be prominently featured in Savage Tide. Though most place names and other such references will be to the World of Greyhawk setting, Mona has stated that there will also be a number of Mystara references, in something of an homage to the Isle's roots.

Wikki: The first Savage Tide adventure set on the Isle of Dread is "Here There Be Monsters", found in Dungeon No. 142 (January 2007). The Isle of Dread remains the setting for the next three adventures: "Tides of Dread," in issue No. 143; "The Lightless Depths," in issue No. 144; and "City of Broken Idols," in issue No. 145.

Wikki: The D&D 4th edition supplement Manual of the Planes (2008) establishes the Isle of Dread as a location in the Feywild (a parallel plane dominated by faeries and unspoiled natural life) as part of its general reorganisation of the D&D cosmos.

Wikki: The D&D 5th edition Dungeon Master Guide (2014) places the Isle of Dread in the Plane of Water, though it mentions that the island has the ability to appear in the Material Plane.[16]

That Isle of Dread sure gets around.
[/QUOTE]

And that's not even considering how many homebrews it's appeared in over the decades!

 

[R_J_K75]

That Isle of Dread sure gets around.

And that's not even considering how many homebrews it's appeared in over the decades!
[/QUOTE]

Surprised its not one big festering sore by now.

 

[R_J_K75]

I never owned it, but I did get to spend some time reading it in a large London bookshop...

It seemed pretty good to me, lots of interesting ideas, I think you could quite easily make an "Adventure Path" type campaign with it.

I could be misremembering whether everything in the setting took place on the ethereal plane or if you were stuck on the ethereal plane trying to manifest and interact with the prime. If it was the latter thats one thing that game me pause, was players constantly trying to get peoples attention. But its been 17 years since I read it so I could be wrong.

 

[wingsandsword]

Didn't the gods lose the war against the primordials?

(Also, anyone else notice that settings like making halflings evil/worse than evil? Eberron has the halfling mafia in Sharn, Dark Sun has cannibal halflings, and Dragonlance has the kender, which seem universally hated)

They might have retconned that in later, but Dark Sun was created in the 2e period, almost 20 years before the concept of "primordials" was introduced into D&D.

If there's any talk of 4e-isms like "Primordials" in Dark Sun lore, they weren't there already and were inserted in 2008 or later after 4e came out.

The original lore for why the world was ruined wasn't about primordials. It began in the Blue Age about 14,000 years before the present, when Athas was mostly ocean and ruled by seafaring halflings who were druidic masters of life-shaping, who tried a ritual to bring even more life into the ocean, but it backfired, creating a toxic brown tide of deadly algae. The Halflings used powerful magic to destroy the brown tide, but it drained the sun from blue to yellow and burned off much of the oceans of Athas, turning it from an aquatic planet, into a verdant green world.

. . .and then 6000 years later, 8000 years before the current, Rajaat discovered arcane magic and forged the unique connection to the elemental planes that let him become the first Sorcerer-King. The process of using Defiling magic to become immortal and creating his champions, the other Dragon Kings, scoured life and energy from the world, turning the sun from Yellow to Red, destroying almost all the remaining oceans and plant life, and creating the desolate desert world that remained. . .and then he and his champions went on genocidal purges and conquered Athas to create the oppressive tyranny that is one of the defining aspects of the setting.

 

[TerraDave]

I'm fairly sure KotB is Greyhawk. I'm ironclad sure Isle of Dread is pre-Mystara Mystara.

longer answers above. Short answer, both where set in the Known World (pre-Mystara Mystara). Many, many groups would have played B1 then X1, which explained where B1 was.

 

[Voadam]

I used and played in elements of Nentir Vale (mostly the 4e cosomology and incorporating ancient tiefling and dragonborn empires into my homebrew mashup setting) but not the actual Points of Light world itself.

 

[Shiroiken]

Birthright - a fun concept, but trying to DM multiple players be rulers was way too complicated. I'd rather use the rules for the nobles a player would be working for. The "highlander" aspect was SUPER cool, but like psionics from 1E, almost no one actually had it by RAW. Instead it was tempting to give it to everyone, which then destroyed the novelty of it.

Council of Wrym - only played a couple of sessions before we all bailed. It was a novel concept, but there really wasn't anything to keep it interesting (unless you were just obsessed with dragons).

Dark Sun - played it several times, as a friend loved to DM the setting. I wasn't that impressed, but I think that was mostly the DM's skill. As a true "survival" campaign, you don't get any better than this, and the twist on every race was cool (especially the halflings). I don't really think the difference between preserving/defiling was played out well though, in any edition.

Dragonlance - played it a couple of times, as a friend loved to DM the setting. It's a cool setting for novels, but it's terrible to play. Kender and Tinker Gnomes destroy any group almost instantly due to their insanity (which players feed into). The only super positive thing I remember is winning an argument about Rastilin, because I was able to play a 1E magic-user to level 6 with only a 3 Str & Con, but an 18 Int & Wis, plus 16 Dex. I used smart play and carefully selected spells to stay alive (I know I wasn't that useful to the party). Eventually he killed me by forcing us to jump of a 50 ft high cliff, after having done it only a moment before (which I feather falled), and when I had everyone but the fighter jump in our Portable Hole, he made us still take half damage, killing me and the thief (who took a lot of damage from the first fall).

Forgotten Realms - for the love of Mystra, there are dozens of great regions to play outside of the Sword Coast! The Sword Coast they provide isn't even the Sword Coast (which is really just a section of cliffs between Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep. WotC has screwed the pooch by ignoring all this potential!

Greyhawk - I've been running Greyhawk for almost 25 years, ever since I became a DM. I could go into great length about it, but I've already done that with Dragonlance. I will say it's the best setting ever... to bad nothing's been put out for it since 1985

Mystara - a pretty interesting setting, but we didn't get too much into detail with it, mostly just using the BECMI modules. The most interesting was when we did Test of the Warlords, which was a precursor to Birthright, having high level characters begin to tame a wild region with strongholds. We also ran a trilogy from Hollow World, which IMO was really cool (we didn't have the books, so we couldn't expand on it)

Nentir Vale - meh. It was a pretty generic setting for 4E to be dropped into. The Cosmic Axis attached to it was pretty interesting overall, but nothing worth trying to incorporate IMO.

Rokugan - an amazing setting that I ran for years... using the d10 system. The D&D version was iffy, because it tried to shoehorn mechanics that didn't really work into a setting not designed for them. It could be viable with heavily modified 5E rules, since 5E is more flexible than 3E was, but I'd probably rather get out the old AEG books instead.

Ravenloft - conceptually a great setting; I ran the original Ravenloft adventure multiple times. However, the DM who loved to run it looked at things... oddly. He seldom used horror checks, which from what I understand was an integral aspect of the setting. He consider Strahd (and most of the Domain Lords) as sympathetic figures, and felt that Paladins were the greatest villains of D&D ever. I think I would have enjoyed it under a different DM, but right now my experiences have been poor.

 

[R_J_K75]

Birthright - a fun concept, but trying to DM multiple players be rulers was way too complicated. I'd rather use the rules for the nobles a player would be working for. The "highlander" aspect was SUPER cool, but like psionics from 1E, almost no one actually had it by RAW. Instead it was tempting to give it to everyone, which then destroyed the novelty of it.

Council of Wrym - only played a couple of sessions before we all bailed. It was a novel concept, but there really wasn't anything to keep it interesting (unless you were just obsessed with dragons).

Dark Sun - played it several times, as a friend loved to DM the setting. I wasn't that impressed, but I think that was mostly the DM's skill. As a true "survival" campaign, you don't get any better than this, and the twist on every race was cool (especially the halflings). I don't really think the difference between preserving/defiling was played out well though, in any edition.

Dragonlance - played it a couple of times, as a friend loved to DM the setting. It's a cool setting for novels, but it's terrible to play. Kender and Tinker Gnomes destroy any group almost instantly due to their insanity (which players feed into). The only super positive thing I remember is winning an argument about Rastilin, because I was able to play a 1E magic-user to level 6 with only a 3 Str & Con, but an 18 Int & Wis, plus 16 Dex. I used smart play and carefully selected spells to stay alive (I know I wasn't that useful to the party). Eventually he killed me by forcing us to jump of a 50 ft high cliff, after having done it only a moment before (which I feather falled), and when I had everyone but the fighter jump in our Portable Hole, he made us still take half damage, killing me and the thief (who took a lot of damage from the first fall).

Forgotten Realms - for the love of Mystra, there are dozens of great regions to play outside of the Sword Coast! The Sword Coast they provide isn't even the Sword Coast (which is really just a section of cliffs between Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep. WotC has screwed the pooch by ignoring all this potential!

Greyhawk - I've been running Greyhawk for almost 25 years, ever since I became a DM. I could go into great length about it, but I've already done that with Dragonlance. I will say it's the best setting ever... to bad nothing's been put out for it since 1985

Mystara - a pretty interesting setting, but we didn't get too much into detail with it, mostly just using the BECMI modules. The most interesting was when we did Test of the Warlords, which was a precursor to Birthright, having high level characters begin to tame a wild region with strongholds. We also ran a trilogy from Hollow World, which IMO was really cool (we didn't have the books, so we couldn't expand on it)

Nentir Vale - meh. It was a pretty generic setting for 4E to be dropped into. The Cosmic Axis attached to it was pretty interesting overall, but nothing worth trying to incorporate IMO.

Rokugan - an amazing setting that I ran for years... using the d10 system. The D&D version was iffy, because it tried to shoehorn mechanics that didn't really work into a setting not designed for them. It could be viable with heavily modified 5E rules, since 5E is more flexible than 3E was, but I'd probably rather get out the old AEG books instead.

Ravenloft - conceptually a great setting; I ran the original Ravenloft adventure multiple times. However, the DM who loved to run it looked at things... oddly. He seldom used horror checks, which from what I understand was an integral aspect of the setting. He consider Strahd (and most of the Domain Lords) as sympathetic figures, and felt that Paladins were the greatest villains of D&D ever. I think I would have enjoyed it under a different DM, but right now my experiences have been poor.

I agree with alot of what you said in regards to the settings you mentioned that I DM'd, played or read. Settings like Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft take both a special bread of DM and group of players to pull off over any length of time, if at all. I ran a Ravenloft campaign but never any of the pre-written modules. At first it worked but after a month or so it just got harder to write adventures that captured the essence of the setting without it feeling contrived. We switched back to the Realms. I played in a Dark Sun game for awhile and it was fun but the DM took the survival thing a little too far at times to the point it just beat you over the head and seemed just more of the same after while.

 

[Remathilis]

As a DM: Eberron, Ravenloft, Planescape, Forgotten Realms (SC) and homebrew
As a Player: Ravenloft, Planescape, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms (Myth Drannor), Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Mystara/Known World, and homebrew.

It should be noted that several of these were failed attempts (games that didn't last too long due to a variety of reasons) or were part of world-hopping games (such as planar PCs spending an extended time on Oerth to do several classic Greyhawk modules, but not being from Oerth).

 

[Remathilis]

I've never played it, so pardon this if it's wrong, but isn't part of the draw to Dark Sun that it sucks? The world sucks. Nothing is good there. That seems to me to be part of why people like playing there. (Also Ravenloft to an extent)

Ravenloft is kinda weird on that, depending on which version of Ravenloft you tend to use. If you go for the classic "weekend in Hell" version (most of 2e's run, as well as Curse of Strahd) then yeah, everything sucks/is evil and the primary focus is to survive long enough until you find a way out of it. But the late-2e/3e Arthaus "campaign world" version tried to make Ravenloft a world where good people could make a difference in the short run, even if evil wins in the long one.