Which campaign setting has a black and white morality to it?

[Mystery Man]

I think Midnight handles it a lot better than FR since it draws inspiration directly from Tolkien, whereas FR seems to me a confused mish-mash of low-fantasy sword & sorcery elements combined with Tolkienesque high fantasy, so in FR you get buxom elven paladinesses in cleavage-revealing armour; which image you just wouldn't get in Midnight or Middle-Earth.

Buxom elven paladinesses - um..where? Do you have an exact region? My players were just asking me why I don't have any buxom elven palidinesses in the campaign and try as I might I couldn't find any regions in any of the source books, setting book...really anywhere. So if you could name a specific region where this is in writing I'd love to send my players there.

Turn "confusing mish-mash" into variant cultures and ideals and you have some of the best role playing "grey areas" everywhere you go. If you'd like to give any specific areas on what you might be "confused" on there is not only me that can help but a lot of help on the web for confused people such as yourself. I'd recomend candlekeep.com for some really experienced and helpful veterans of Realmslore.

If you can't tell, when someone like to inject opinion as fact regarding my setting it really tends to get under my skin.

 

[Awakened]

Buxom elven paladinesses - um..where? Do you have an exact region?

Hmm... Baldur's Gate and the Heartlands, Sword Coast North? I was under the impression that these metropoliton regions are home to many an attractive barmaid. Then again, MY campaign in the realms is about as black and white as you can get...
IN THE BLACK CORNER... Disgustingly obese or disturbingly skeletal people with grotesque skin growths.
IN THE WHITE CORNER... Handsome aristocrats and adventurers, and busty barmaids

 

[Felix]

[/Aside] I think Tolkien is greyer than you think...

To find it you must first look past the [Evil] and [Good] incarnate that are at work in the world. Humanity is the battleground for grey, and to a large degree what G and E are fighting over. The G has its elves, the E has its orcs (perversions of elves), and humanity can go either way. What Tolkien presents is the end of the days when morality was black and white (the first and second ages) and the coming of ambiguous morality. As they say, the Age of Man has come; because of the multiple alliances of Men and their differing dispositions, the Fourth Age must surely be an age where the lines of Good and Evil become blurred. Especially as the orcs and the elves leave middle earth for the dominion of Men.

 

[Geoffrey]

Isn't DragonLance more black & white than most other published FRPG settings?

 

[Mystery Man]

Hmm... Baldur's Gate and the Heartlands, Sword Coast North? I was under the impression that these metropoliton regions are home to many an attractive barmaid.

Barmaids yeah.

 

[the Jester]

Dragonlance, imho.

 

[Vigilance]

Greyhawk too... you dont get more "openly black" than Iuz or the Horned Society.

Chuck

 

[Estlor]

And then, on a different note, you have places like Mystara where the focus is more on Law versus Chaos than Good versus Evil. Nothing exemplifies this more than the Thyatis/Glantri rivalry (a strong empire versus a politically challenging magocracy).

Printed settings, however, I'd promote Midnight and Forgotten Realms. Dragonstar also has a definite good and evil, but its built around the gray of a governing body that legitimizes the existance of evil.

 

[Remathilis]

Planescape is pretty black/white...


and blue/grey/purple/red/orange/lilac/muave/green/pink...

 

[S'mon]

Buxom elven paladinesses - um..where? Do you have an exact region?

Neverwinter - Neverwinter Nights & the lead NPC Lady Aribeth. Of course you could say it's only a CRPG. Still, Toril to me is a very Larry Elmore-art place and the female NPC write-ups in my 1e Forgetten Realms set almost all seem to fit this kind of archetype, alien to both Tolkienesque high fantasy and Howardesque swords & sorcery.