Where is your home?

[amerigoV]

Note that the poll choices are not D&D-specific. He has Shadowrun, WoD, and other non-D&D stuff in there.

When I run D&D, I tend to hombrew the world. When I run other games (I have a long-running campaign in Deadlands, and I'm starting a once-a-month game of Shadowrun) I tend to use the game-specific setting.

Yeah, but I'm using mostly Savage Worlds stuff, of which that material is not listed (50 Fathoms, Hellfrost, Shaintar, Beast and Barbarian, etc). But I can use SW with Greyhawk as well.

 

[Evenglare]

Why is that a surprise? Even RPGs explicitly tied to specific settings have people adapting them to others. It's hardly a surprise that less specific games show people doing their own settings with them. And I suspect even the people using official settings often play in less-developed areas - that's certainly the case in my Traveller campaign, set in Daibei, which has seriously limited canon material.

Because those settings shouldn't be as popular as they are if it's not a surprise. If -EVERYONE- plays in their own world the financial aspects of making the RPG wouldn't be enough to justify the work put into it. Not really a jump in logic I would say. Why make something if no one is going to play in the world? Novels? Sure, but no reason to make a campaign setting. And your point of playing in less developed areas is completely irrelevant to the question asked, if you are playing in forgotten realms (less developed area or not) you are playing in forgotten realms.

 

[Ahnehnois]

ENW is a forum for advanced DMs and devoted hobbyists. I'd bet that a lot more beginner or casual gamers are much more likely to use published settings. For a lot of DMs, I've seen the natural progression of trying a game or two in a published setting before creating your own.

The hobby is inherently weird that way; the deeper you are into playing D&D, the less you'll use any type of published material, whether it's setting or not.

As to why settings work for publishers, the lesson from 2e was notoriously that they aren't very profitable, and the industry has clearly moved away from them to an extent. However, people who do buy setting products aren't necessarily playing in that setting. I have four FR books and six Kalamar books on my shelf, and a few other products that are somewhat setting-specific, and I never considered using a published setting to actually run a game in. I got them because they were interesting to look at, available cheap, and good for inspiration.

 

[Evenglare]

I get that I really do, but this thread is specifically for published settings. If you guys want another thread to show off how cool your homebrewed setting is. GREAT! Please go do that! However, that's not what this thread is about, it was stated that way in the initial post. It's really annoying to set out those stipulations then have people come in saying "I like my own" It's like some people don't even read or something. I tried to put as many published settings as I could think of for voting, i apologize if I missed your favorite published setting. But take the homebrew stuff somewhere else. There's a time and a place for those, and it's not here.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I read the thread topic and didn't respond to it. Then I read "Surprising, not a lot of love for official settings." and responded to that, as did several others it would seem.

 

[Hyper-Man]

Your poll is also missing any supers settings like Champions Universe.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Your poll is also missing any supers settings like Champions Universe.

The first commandment of polls on ENWorld: Thou shalt not create a poll capable of withstanding any sort of critical or logical scrutiny.

 

[Alarian]

Shadow World by Terry K. Amthor and Iron Crown Enterprises.

 

[Bluenose]

Because those settings shouldn't be as popular as they are if it's not a surprise. If -EVERYONE- plays in their own world the financial aspects of making the RPG wouldn't be enough to justify the work put into it. Not really a jump in logic I would say. Why make something if no one is going to play in the world? Novels? Sure, but no reason to make a campaign setting. And your point of playing in less developed areas is completely irrelevant to the question asked, if you are playing in forgotten realms (less developed area or not) you are playing in forgotten realms.

Who says that any particular setting is particularly popular? It doesn't show up in this poll, and I'm not convinced that Enworld is particularly unusual in that respect. The same sort of thing showed up on the Traveller board I frequent, where more people used the game for settings they'd developed themselves than for pre-written settings, and that's true whenever I've seen a poll like this for any RPG not strongly tied to a theme. Homebrew settings make/made up 50% of what people played in. Published settings made up the rest, usually with one more popular than the others but not at a level that approached homebrews. It's only the games where the setting is very heavily implied in the rules - Pendragon or L5R are examples- that work the other way, with people mostly playing the published setting and homebrew settings in the minority. And even then there are people doing their own thing with the rule-set while not using the setting.

 

[CSwizzy]

Dragonlance for me, or should I say my first character that I rolled. We kind of did a mini homebrew where Ansalon was in the southern hemisphere, Faerun was in the Northern and Axshel (world homebrewed by our late DM) was on the other side of the world. When I took my first foray into DMing I used the same set up and put Golarion from PF in the Northern hemisphere with Axshel being in the southern. Too bad I don't have have notes on the homebrewed world

Kind of shocked I'm the only one who voted for DL.