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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rellott" data-source="post: 8143969" data-attributes="member: 6809701">The tone in the world books makes the setting seem a little darker/grittier than FR. Probably a bit more like how I’ve heard Greyhawk is, though I have never read much about Greyhawk directly. A whole above-ground nation is ruled by vampires. The underdark is run by the Ghoul Empire. Baba Yaga is real and does what she wants. Slavery is real in many parts of the world, though is often a contested practice. Ancient mage wars unleashed Eldritch horrors on some parts of the world. You get the drift. That said, you don’t have to use that tone if you don’t want to, and a lot of that is dependent on where you set the adventure, too. I think the setting as a whole would be easier for players to access than FR because A) it doesn’t have such a massive backlog of lore for every single ruin and tiny hamlet you come across, like FR does, and B) it is pretty much designed as an alternate “real world” like others have said. It’s easy to settle into some basic expectations, and things feel a bit more natural. When you look at the map, you can pretty much line things up with Europe, North Africa, and west Asia/the Middle East, and the setting takes a lot of cues from the relevant real-world cultures of their respective areas while still spicing it up with enough fantasy to keep things interesting and unpredictable.</blockquote>