What Is Your Favorite Campaign Setting?

[Committed Hero]

I will say "literary Earth" like Anno Dracula or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or Passages, an old 3rd edition/OGL game). I like the ability to meet historical figures as well as fictional ones, and the ability to wind up in dramatic plots. Game wise, that means The Dracula Dossier for sure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

i always wanted to play Al-Qadim but never managed to sell it to any of my groups.

I had a similar experience. I do remember liking the setting and it sparking an interest in Middle East history, but it wasn’t as easy a sell for my group at the time as some of the other settings. Another setting book I loved was Glory of Rome. But couldn’t get folks to try a Roman campaign back then

 

[Yora]

Assuming we're not counting our own homebrew settings, it clearly would be The Savage Frontier for me.
That little Forgotten Realms book can stand as a full campaign setting on its own, and the first version of the North from 1988 is a much more interesting place for adventures than all the later versions that timeline advanced all the best villains and threats out of it.
The map keeps impressing me more every time I look closely at it as the layout and the positioning of settlements and factions inspires plenty of situations.

Star Wars during the Rebellion Era is also a very cool setting.

 

[Bagpuss]

Favourite campaign setting is the "Real World" but with something different (be it Magic, Vampires, Mythos creatures, Magical Martial Arts or whatever) doesn't really matter what.

2nd favourite - A sci-fi setting that doesn't include space magic as a major theme.

Fantasy D&D wise - Birthright, but I'd rather play Pendragon.

 

[Velderan]

Of all time? Probably Krynn because I have a lot of great memories of running different campaigns there during the 2e days. It definitely helped we only had 1 brief "but that didn't happen in the books" moment from a new player, but once they got the point that we were telling our own version, we never had issues with people assuming the published novels were how the games had to go. We also tended to lean into the things the books didn't really touch on much, like the minotaurs and regions like southern Solamnia.

 

[payn]

and the Third Imperium (Traveller).

I do enjoy the Third Impreium. There is a lot of basic foundation type material laid, but a ton of room for Refs to fill in the blanks. Players dont seem too obsessed with it being all perfectly canon. There is no end to the exploration that can happen there.

 

[Tonguez]

Earth - the rich history and diverse cultural development is truely impressive, even if it does get a bit implausible at times

 

[Velderan]

Favourite campaign setting is the "Real World" but with something different (be it Magic, Vampires, Mythos creatures, Magical Martial Arts or whatever) doesn't really matter what.

There's certain time periods that just work so well IMO for running a particular style of game. I've used the default 1920s time period for Call of Cthulhu which went really well as far as limiting things the players had access to and getting them to interact with the game world more. Despite largely playing the game in the 1990s, my Marvel FASERIP games always took place in the 80s. I felt like technologies that became a lot more common in the 90s usually would have taken away from the superhero games I liked to run and genius characters that could invent some of those things earlier just made those characters stand out more IMO.

 

[billd91]

I do enjoy the Third Impreium. There is a lot of basic foundation type material laid, but a ton of room for Refs to fill in the blanks. Players dont seem too obsessed with it being all perfectly canon. There is no end to the exploration that can happen there.

Oh, man, you did NOT spend enough time on the Traveller message boards. There were people with elaborate hierarchies of canonical materials. I suppose some of them may have been more along the GM side of things, but some of those board participants were more obsessed with canon than St. Augustine.

 

[payn]

Oh, man, you did NOT spend enough time on the Traveller message boards. There were people with elaborate hierarchies of canonical materials. I suppose some of them may have been more along the GM side of things, but some of those board participants were more obsessed with canon than St. Augustine.

I believe it. I have not had the misfortune of running into any of them...yet.