Setting Junkies - How do you get your fix these days?

[Dragonhelm]

Hi, my name is Trampas. I'm a setting junkie.

"Hi, Trampas!"

My big fix has always been Dragonlance. It's a setting very near and dear to my heart. In the last 10 years, I got involved with DL online fandom, helping to create the Dragonlance Nexus. I even got to write for the Legend of Huma comic and was one of the freelance RPG writers that MWP used. So yeah, that's what calls to me the most setting-wise.

That being said, I enjoy other settings too. Dark Sun 4e and Gamma World have been my recent fixes.

I really want to learn more about Golarion. It seems to have some old school feel, while also being fresh. I wouldn't mind playing in a 4e Golarion game sometime.

That's just recent stuff, though. There are a lot of other settings that I would love to game in.

 

[ggroy]

It's not so much about settings as it is about setting -support-.

How much of the "setting support" is nothing more than just a psychological bias on the part of splatbook purchasers? In particular, the psychological bias of "sunk costs".

 

[amethal]

As others have mentioned, Golarion is doing a very good job of meeting my setting craving. The books are coming out faster than I can absorb them (and if any of you Golarion fans feel like helping out by adding articles to the Pathfinder wiki at PathfinderWiki, we need all the help we can get!)

Other than that, the new Oathbound supplement has got me back into Oathbound once more.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Other than that, the new Oathbound supplement has got me back into Oathbound once more.

They're still making Oathbound products? Link?

 

[evildmguy]

I think I am a reformed junkie. I used to get all of the TSR settings back in the 90s and read them all. But, a decade and a half later, after using few of them, I didn't keep many of them. It's not that they were bad but they weren't fun to move!

Then for a while, I did want to create my own setting and so worked on that for a few years here and there. However, I was never really satisfied with what I had done for various reasons.

What I did recently was go back to a brand new Grey Box of FR that I bought and made that the default setting but using 4E rules. Then, as I read things that came after that, as I still have my FR stuff, I look at it from the perspective of the Grey Box set. So, no change in gods. No Maztica or Zakara (sp?) but it does have Kara Tur. That, for me, has been a fun read and a new perspective on things that I have enjoyed. It's like reading it again for the first time!

Edit: I should add that I also read WoD and Exalted and those help with any DTs with needing a setting. In fact, since those are newer in terms of game design ideas, I'm trying to bring my new, old FR into a new design and perhaps use ideas from Exalted, and a bit from 4E FR, into it. Again, it's been quite fun, if nothing else as a mental exercise for myself.

 

[gamerprinter]

Being an overly creative setting junkie, I have been relegated to creating my settings, and for the first time the settings are intended for publication.

My current project (and I'm not secretive about it) is my Kaidan: The Gift and Other Tales of Horror fills my need for a feudal Japan setting with built-in authenticity combined with Asian Horror, a genre I'd love to see in Pathfinder.

Kaidan is a Rite Publishing patronage project and setting development is going on right now, with a tentative release by early March 2011. The setting material will be divided between a 3 part adventure arc focusing on a party of 'gaijin' characters (probably from Golarian or other similar world setting) delivering a gift to a provincial noble lord.

The setting features:

1. All social castes, not restricted to Samurai caste - a greater emphasis on the Commoner caste, though all castes are emphasized in the setting.
2. A doomed cycle of reincarnation bound to the Buddhist Hells.
3. A huge cast of monsters, demons, spirits and ghosts.
4. Reliance on archetypes for most classes and very few prestige classes.
5. New domains and school of magic, animistic religion, new ki powers.
6. Ancestral Relics, a kind of legacy weapon/item linked to Honor.
7. New magic items and new spells.
8. Maps galore - regional, city, encounter scale maps.
9. Accompanying Player Race Books with base race and paragon classes.
10. Easy to plug-and-play into any existing world setting or homebrew.

When I need a good setting, my best cure is to make it myself!

GP

 

[ggroy]

I think I am a reformed junkie. I used to get all of the TSR settings back in the 90s and read them all. But, a decade and a half later, after using few of them, I didn't keep many of them. It's not that they were bad but they weren't fun to move!

I went through a similar phase a decade later than you, after I got back into rpg games. Though I haven't went on a massive purge yet. (I took a long 15+ year hiatus away from rpg games, where I completely missed 2E AD&D and 3E D&D). At the time (shortly after 3.5E was released and the d20 bubble had already burst), I picked up all kinds of setting splatbooks from the $5 bargain bins at several gaming stores. Stuff like Scarred Lands, Oathbound, Kingdoms of Kalamar, etc ...

In the end, I never got around to really using many of the d20 bubble era setting splatbooks I picked up. The only setting books I actually used in a 3.5E game, were ones like the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Underdark, and Castlemourn. Most of the other 3E/3.5E Forgotten Realms and Eberron splatbooks I picked up, were never used at all in a game. At best, these setting splatbooks ended up being mostly pleasure reading material. Though to be frank, reading mediocre D&D novels and/or cheesy D&D comic books would have made better pleasure reading material in comparison.

At this point I've slowly moved into the "reformed setting junkie" category. I'll be off the Pathfinder treadmill soon. Not much point anymore in buying more Golarion splatbooks, when I'm not DMing anything at all these days. (My 4E Encounters game died yesterday, and my previous 4E D&D game died around a year ago).

 

[Dice4Hire]

I have never been a setting "junkie" and thought that the TSR days were just TOO MUCH for FR and such. Man did they pile the books out.

But in these 4E days, I would like to see a it more support for the settings. And of course, being me, that means non-DDI support.

It seems the pendulum has swung, at least for WOTC stuff. Apparently other companies are still going TSR style. Though more successfully.

 

[Votan]

For gaming it has been Golarian (using Pathfinder Adventure paths). For reading/thinking it has been a combination of World of Darkness, Star Wars (sadly ended) and the 4E planes books (which describe a really cool setting, in my opinion). Things like the astral sea and the 4E divinities are very "dark fantasy" and quite interesting.

 

[amerigoV]

Mmmm, Savage Worlds Hellfrost and Space 1889 for Christmas. Thank you Savage Santa!