Where is your home?

[pickin_grinnin]

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.

You missed a lot of published settings in a lot of different games. That's why I think you should have had an "other" category.

 

[Evenglare]

Yeah, eh. Nothing I can do about it now.

 

[Nellisir]

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.

Either TSR or WotC, back in the day, did a big survey of its readership. The vast majority of readers never used any of the adventures in Dungeon - they just read them (raises hand). I would actually be willing to bet that the majority of campaign setting purchasers never run a single game in the setting. I own or have owned Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Birthright, Mystara, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Midnight, Dawnforge, Kara Tur, Rokugan, Thieves World, and more, and (as I said previously) haven't ever run a single game in any of them. They're just fun, inspirational reads.

Edit: I said Dragon magazine initially, but it was Dungeon.

 

[gamerprinter]

I generally believe there are many Pathfinder users of the Golarian setting, especially those playing PFS adventure material (and there are quite a lot.) Perhaps the majority of PFS users don't frequent ENWorld, thus aren't prolific posters here and not participating in this survey - which definitely skews results. And agreeing with what someone else said earlier in this thread that only a small segment of the gaming population occupy these boards, with only the hardest core GMs forming the bulk of this forum's membership. Extreme GMs generally don't use published settings relying almost entirely on homebrew solutions.

As a developer of one of the published settings not included in this survey [Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG)], I can be glad of one thing. I realized at the start that Oriental settings aren't everyone's preferred type of setting which makes it 'niche'. Since it is also a horror setting, that further makes it 'niche within niche'. Thus being Japanese horror, it is 'niche within niche within niche'. So outside the nuanced setting material, in every other way the Kaidan products exist to support Pathfinder based oriental games, and not specifically Kaidan itself. For example, while Way of the Samurai (PFRPG) is intended to be a Kaidan supplement, except for one mention at the start of that supplement, Kaidan isn't reflected again in the rest of the publication, as it was primarily designed to support samurai options in anyone's Pathfinder game, not necessarily those playing with Kaidan itself. And that product does an excellent job at doing just that.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Even during the height of the WoD stuff, I didn't use their metaplot, and only used the bits of their overall setting I liked. I cut out anything that wasn't dark and adult enough for my tastes.

I have found that I incorporate more of the published settings in games that are smaller in scope than D&D/Pathfinder, or are very specialized. Some smaller, independent games have very intriguing published settings, which is often a large part of what draws me to those games, so just tweak those, instead of abandoning them altogether.

Now that I think of it, I stick pretty close to CoC, because it's so well done overall and I try hard to retain the general Lovecraftian flavor.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Dragon magazine, back in the day, did a big survey of its readership. The vast majority of readers never used any of the articles in Dragon

I only remember using a handful of articles from Dragon in a campaign. I just enjoyed reading the magazine. I never used any of the published adventures or settings, though - just some of the alternate classes.

 

[gamerprinter]

I only remember using a handful of articles from Dragon in a campaign. I just enjoyed reading the magazine. I never used any of the published adventures or settings, though - just some of the alternate classes.

I only ever purchased the Halloween editions of Dragon magazine to get new creepy concepts on monsters, and evil magic items, which I did often use in my games. I've never used the included adventure material. Dungeon magazine, I only bought a couple, but since I mostly create my own adventures, those were only ever used for ideas, and not as adventures verbatim.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I'm using my own setting these days (Parsantium - see sig) but had been using the Realms off and on from 1987 through to 2009. I'm looking forward to the 5e iteration.

I've also got a soft spot for many other classic TSR/WotC settings, including Planescape, Spelljammer, Zakhara, Kara-Tur and Greyhawk.

Cheers


Rich

 

[Nellisir]

I only ever purchased the Halloween editions of Dragon magazine to get new creepy concepts on monsters, and evil magic items, which I did often use in my games. I've never used the included adventure material. Dungeon magazine, I only bought a couple, but since I mostly create my own adventures, those were only ever used for ideas, and not as adventures verbatim.

I misremembered and have edited my original quote: it was actually Dungeon, and the percentage was something like 70%+ of Dungeon readers never used any of the adventures - they just read them. So you weren't alone by a long shot.

 

[jeffh]

Even for D&D, not having Mystara - my favorite official D&D setting - listed is a bit of a problem. (Or the Known World - most people don't distinguish between the two, if you do or even were aware that some people do, you're pretty old-school!)

Of the settings I'd be likeliest to use, only Golarion is listed. Other "published" settings, for various values of "published" one of which is strictly future tense, that I would seriously consider:

• Mystara
• The Star Wars universe
• The DC universe
• Ivalice, the setting of various Final Fantasy and related games (mostly as presented in FFXII)
• Aperion, the setting being created right now for my own Fantasy Infinity RPG

The latter would count as homebrew right now, but that won't be true forever. There's also two other homebrew settings I wouldn't mind going back to someday, neither of which I have any plans to publish (unlike Aperion).