D&D 5E Setting Playoffs Battle Royale (round 2)

[77IM]

I'm surprised that Greyhawk got so much love but Blackmoor didn't get a single vote. Blackmoor was basically the first D&D setting and Greyhawk was the second -- although the books were released in reverse order. I guess Greyhawk got more support over the years due to Gygax's continued involvement at TSR.

 

[Ancalagon]

I'm a bit surprised to see such a strong 4 leaders pack... and pleasantly surprised to see both my choices in those

I have very fond memories of greyhawk, we did a long level 1-9 campaign in it that was excellent. A bit disappointed it just sort of puttered out... our GM used the setting to weave a very great story.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think that any setting at all can prove to be home to a great campaign. Each of those listed in the poll has potential, and if your DM and players are good, you can get a lot out of them.

Each setting has inherent pros and cons, and plenty of hooks to create adventures and characters and entire campaigns.

Having said that, I think that it's a question of the pros outweighing the cons. For me, certain settings are that way, for someone else, it'll be other settings.

My one observation about all the settings listed is that many of them are very Tolkienesque, classic fantasy/kitchen sink type settings. I've played games in most of them, and ultimately they aren't all that different from one to the next. And I by no means think that there is anything wrong with such a setting...I just don't know if most games played in those settings ultimately feel all that different. I don't know if we need 6 to 8 settings that all kind o cover the same ground.

So having said all that, I'm not too surprised to see the results, although I almost would have guessed Forgotten Realms instead of Greyhawk. I suppose that of those two settings, perhaps nostalgia and absence played big parts in the voting.

Dark Sun is the most radically different in many ways, and Ebberon was the main setting addition from the 3E era, so they both make sense. Planescape is the most thematic, along with Ravenloft, so I can see them making it in.

I guess I'm a bit surprised by Al-Qadim. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but more because I thought it actually took place on Toril and therefore counted as Forgotten Realms by default.

 

[Lanefan]

Poll is closed.

Looks like it might have been better left to run just a bit longer as if you're cutting to top-8 you've got a 4-way tie (!) for 8th - Birthright, Dragonlance, Mystara, Nentir Vale.

Lan-"and I'd have broken that tie were the poll still open...well, partly"-efan

 

[Mercule]

I'll be posting the new poll, momentarily. I was tempted to go straight to the semi-finals because of the spread, but I set rules at the beginning for a reason -- people know, in advance, what they're voting for. Ironically, I almost included a clause about skipping a round if there was a break where those above doubled the next tier. I'm not going to do that because 1) rules and 2) I want the Realms to lose fairly.

I considered giving Birthright the extra .001 vote tally for winning the Survivor competition, but decided to go with the idea of checking the previous round's ranking because it's repeatable for next round, should it matter. This method will be recursive, as needed. In the extremely unlikely event that there's a tie that can't be broken that way, I'll cast the tie-breaker, personally.

So... 8th place goes to Mystara.