D&D General What are the "dead settings" of D&D?

[Parmandur]

There was an official Dragon Mag take on Perdido Street Station?! With China Mieville involved? I mean I know he's a keen RPGer and had a ton of D&D experience (most of his novels contain at least one pretty direct D&D reference, like the classic like in Perdido Street - "I'm just in this for the gold and experience!", or how one of the characters in Kraken views himself as a "Paladin in Hell"), but I did not know that. He's a pretty cool guy, I spoke to him once briefly after a lecture he gave on the immanent in city fantasy.

EDIT - Wow found it. You really don't want to get in the way of someone with a Possible Sword, which sounds about right. Huge article, too, but it came out around one of the times I was very definitely not playing 3.XE, which explains why I never saw it.

...

Man, I never got Dragon & Dungeon specifically, and I understand why it won't happen, but I sure miss magazines.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The story behind it is Gary needed an ally in the power struggle at TSR so he brought Dave Arneson back with the promise that they will allow him to do blackmoor. They put it in the distant past of mystara, thousands of years before current day. Then they blew it up wiping it from the face of the map, and removing all aspects of it aside from a few scant mentions here or there.

Wow, that was rude. No wonder there was bad bloody between them!

 

[atanakar]

All settings are dead to me. I home-brew only.

In the 80s-90s I used to buy a lot of setting boxes, modules and novels for inspiration but I don't do that anymore.

The only setting book I bought for 5e was Sword Coast. I've resisted all other temptations so far. I do buy generic 5e books like Xanathar's.

I would buy a Greyhawk (+Blackmoor) setting book if it there was enough meat around the bone and a nice map.

Lack of setting books and dead settings are a non-issue for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

...

Man, I never got Dragon & Dungeon specifically, and I understand why it won't happen, but I sure miss magazines.

Right? I mean, later Dragon is nowhere near as wild and wonderful as earlier Dragon (and this was very late, from my perspective), but it was fantastic to have content like this coming out EVERY MONTH. I mean it seems almost unimaginable now, right? And in a big glossy magazine you could lay around and read? Even digital stuff isn't remotely giving you that sort of content/month, not in a collected, well-edited, presentable format. I'm sure if one follows a few blogs and reads a few reddits, one can collect as much material, technically, and perhaps even of the same standard, but it's just not the same, to go around gathering up bits and bobs, as it was to receive a big honking magazine you could read on the soft or whatever.

I got so many good ideas from Dragon and Dungeon back in the day (and saw quite a few bad ones that made me go "Well now I know I definitely do not want to do that!", too!), and there was so much fantastic art. Which is the one thing D&D is bizarrely missing today - fantastic art. It's not like there isn't tons and tons of it out there. WotC themselves put out insane amounts of fantastic art via MtG, but D&D art for 5E just isn't great, as a whole, I think I've discussed this before, despite the odd good piece. Dragon had a lot of bad art, but it also had a lot of really good stuff, really inspiring stuff, too.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Malatar, was that a D&D setting?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Dark Sun seems to have a highly comparable following to Ravnica, despite last having a new book ten years ago, thus it's slightly questionable that you put it in B, and Ravnica in A.

As I explained, I placed any campaign setting that is currently supported by WOTC in the highest category.

I would also assume that our anecdotal evidence is slightly skewed based on what I've seen here (the commenters on the forum seem to skew much older than the people that actually play). I think Dark Sun has strong support, and that is what makes it a "B."

Dragonlance, from what I can tell, may have a larger active following than Greyhawk. Thus it is very hard to see why DL is D and GH is B - actually DL is in C and D so that's weird. I'd put both GH and DL in C.

Um .... no? Based on everything I have observed, personally, in conversations, looking at forums, looking at the release of product from WoTC (Saltmarsh is a Greyhawk product), and based upon seeing campaign request on-line and PbP, DL is almost non-existent in terms of play, whereas GH has a thriving community both for 5e and certainly for those people playing older editions. I can't even understand this comparison, TBH.

Ravenloft is pretty actively played right now due to the 5E AP. Hard to see why that isn't a B.

Because that's not the campaign setting.

 

[atanakar]

Malatar, was that a D&D setting?

Seems like it. Part of FR : Malatra: The Living Jungle - The Piazza

 

[Coroc]

what was this red steel thing, was this mystara? I can't remember.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As I explained, I placed any campaign setting that is currently supported by WOTC in the highest category.

I would also assume that our anecdotal evidence is slightly skewed based on what I've seen here (the commenters on the forum seem to skew much older than the people that actually play). I think Dark Sun has strong support, and that is what makes it a "B."

Um .... no? Based on everything I have observed, personally, in conversations, looking at forums, looking at the release of product from WoTC (Saltmarsh is a Greyhawk product), and based upon seeing campaign request on-line and PbP, DL is almost non-existent in terms of play, whereas GH has a thriving community both for 5e and certainly for those people playing older editions. I can't even understand this comparison, TBH.

Because that's not the campaign setting.

Wow, so basically its completely arbitrary? Ravenloft is as much of a campaign setting now as it was in 1E, and claiming its "not a campaign setting" when people are clearly treating it as such and playing there is pretty bloody silly, frankly. You reject anecdotes, but your justification for including Greyhawk is anecdotes and an adventure - which is exactly the same situation for 5E as Ravenloft. You can't claim Saltmarsh for GH, and reject Strahd for Ravenloft.

So you're directly contradicting yourself on both anecdotes (they matter when they're your anecdotes, not anyone elses) and adventures which are set in specific campaign settings.

It also means your top category is extremely misleading in terms of its title. A setting could have almost no-one playing it, but because it was published, you'd class it as "significant active campaigning". I mean god, can you imagine doing this list for 2E? It'd be such a joke because there's no way all those settings had "significant active campaigning", and whilst you might just barely be able to squeak it by with 5E, right at this moment, give it 3-4 years and one of those or more will be not actually have "significant active campaigning". You should probably change A to "Currently in print at WotC".

 

[atanakar]

what was this red steel thing, was this mystara? I can't remember.

Yes Mystara:
Red Steel features a dust, vermeil, which grants extraordinary powers to anyone who brews it up and drinks it, but also may cause excruciating physical deformities, and rocks, cinnabryl, which can be formed into jewelry that fends off the side effects of vermeil, and shaped into weapons capable of wounding magical creatures. Both substances permeate the war-ravaged lands of the Savage Coast (introduced in 1985's X9 The Savage Coast module), spewing enchantments.[1]