Your least favourite setting

This is tough because it takes a lot to make me dislike something:

Spelljammer - it was just, I dunno... goofy. And not wierd in the 'fantastic and evocative' way that Planescape was, instead it was just dorky and made me giggle to an extent. I'm sure that I'd dislike it less if I read more of the sourcebooks, but I really don't care for the pirates in space aspect and so I've got little reason to do more reading.

GURPS - I have fallen asleep during every GURPS game that I have ever played. In one of those games I didn't even stay conscious through character creation. Numbers upon numbers upon skill numbers and *seizure at the memory*
 

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Banshee16 said:
If it was done right, I'd definitely check it out. As it stands, one of my players in my Planescape game has a dwarven rune mage (from the Burok Torn book) and I've got an NPC drendali tatoo adept running a tatoo parlor in Sigil. So I've been trying to integrates bits of the setting, because they're very cool.

Just way too much material to try and coral to run an actual game.

Banshee

Far as I'm concerned, if it's done by me, (with some fan input/playtesting) it will be done right! ;)
 

Testament said:
Finally, there's the issue of how cobbled together it [the FR] feels. Every region is so fruggin' different that it makes no sense to me how this world came to exist. Mulhorand especially feels out of place, it seems more like an excuse for Egyptian style games in the same world.

Well, it´s, uhm, just like, y´know...The Real World! There is, like, an egyptian style country called, uhm, Egypt. ;)
 

Blackthorne said:
Well, it´s, uhm, just like, y´know...The Real World! There is, like, an egyptian style country called, uhm, Egypt. ;)
But that's part of the problem. Whereas most of the FR try to differentiate themselves from real world historical facts, gods, etc., Mulhorand is full of that kind of stuff. In this regard, it's like a foreign body in the FR.
 

Turjan said:
But that's part of the problem. Whereas most of the FR try to differentiate themselves from real world historical facts, gods, etc., Mulhorand is full of that kind of stuff. In this regard, it's like a foreign body in the FR.
Uh, Chessenta, which is akin to classical greece down to the togas and olives. Unther which is evocative of Babylon and ancient Mesopotamia (they were ruled by Marduk!). Calimshan, which is reminiscent of Morocco (Islamic/Arab culture mixed with European influences). Amn, which is a fantasy version of early renaissance Spain right down to, conquistadors, native-oppressing faiths and oceangoing explorers. The Moonshae Isles, which is pretty obviously based on the Celtic-era British Isles. Cormyr bears more than a slight resemblence to Caroliginian France. Durpar is a pretty clear fantasy copy of India.

Not to forget Zakhara and Maztica, which were directly inspired by the middle east and central america, the Hordelands which is Mongolia and central asia, and the Realms being home to Kara Tur, which has obvious fantasy copies of China (the main one based on Tang dynasty, with a smaller splinter based on the Han dynasty) complete with Great Wall, Japan (separate copies for Kamakura and Edo periods), Tibet and Korea.

I always saw the Forgotten Realms as a large, healthy dose of real-world cultures, mixed with some distinctly fantasy cultures, juggled around and retold through a fantasy lens. Just enough like Earth that players could relate to it, but fantastic enough to not be burdened down with our own history.
 
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wingsandsword said:
Uh, Chessenta, which is akin to classical greece down to the togas and olives. Unther which is evocative of Babylon and ancient Persia (they were ruled by Marduk!). Calimshan, which is reminiscent of Morocco (Islamic/Arab culture mixed with European influences). Amn, which is a fantasy version of early renaissance Spain right down to, conquistadors, native-oppressing faiths and oceangoing explorers. The Moonshae Isles, which is pretty obviously based on the Celtic-era British Isles. Cormyr bears more than a slight resemblence to Caroliginian France. Durpar is a pretty clear fantasy copy of India.
Right, the region around Mulhorand, Unther and Chessenta is clearly the worst offender in this sense, and that was my point. Importing a real world pantheon into the Realms is the icing on the cake. Calimshan, Amn or Cormyr are different; they contain much more independent material, despite all the references to real world cultures. All these later additions to the Realms like Zakhara or Kara Tur don't really count in my book. There must be a reason why the North is by far the favourite adventure region for most people on EN World :).

wingsandsword said:
I always saw the Forgotten Realms as a large, healthy dose of real-world cultures, mixed with some distinctly fantasy cultures, juggled around and retold through a fantasy lens. Just enough like Earth that players could relate to it, but fantastic enough to not be burdened down with our own history.
I agree, and that's why I like to adventure there :). Still, I don't like it if the copy goes too far. It's like adventuring in the British Museum ;).
 

Man this is a tough call because I really don't like the idea of spelljammer, D&D IN SPACE but then you just gots to hate the kinder in dragonlance. So I'll say anything to reliant on psionics (just jarring) though dark sun sounded interesting with it's defilers and presevers. In the end I gotta go with Spelljammer anything with space hippo's has just gotta die.
 

I don't exactly hate any one setting, though some have elements or ideas that don't really appeal to me as a DM nor as a player. Ravenloft comes to mind. The occasional horror themed adventure is one thing, but basing an entire setting around that becomes pretty oppressive as far as themes go. I play D&D to have fun, not to be running ragged just to survive like in some fantasy incarnation of the Resident Evil franchise. That, and it was just never that scary to me; the one thing it tries so hard to be, it isn't.

I'm fairly familiar with Forgotten Realms but mostly because I read a few novels (some good, some bad) and the rest of the time the setting was shoved in my face by the monstrous amount of support it had in 2e and the computer games that followed. To me, FR will always be a setting for hack-n-slash fests (I play Neverwinter Nights on occasion for just that reason). The world just feels thrown together with no real rhyme or reason, as some have already mentioned. Calimshan and Al-Qadim seem redundant together, Mulhorand and Kara-tur are obviously tacked-on additions and just don't jive with the rest of the setting. The pantheon irks me (Oghma is a Celtic god, Tyr is Nordic, it was like Ed was picking and choosing gods from real world mythologies at random), as do the uber NPCs and high magic/power level. Fey'ri rub me the wrong way too (how can we make elves even cooler, I know, let's cross-breed them with demons!). Drow were all but demystified. FR has a lot of detail, yes, but it lacks consistency and cohesion, not to mention originality. I never participated in a FR campaign that lasted for more than a couple of sessions before it folded (though it's partly because of the DMs, I'll admit).

On a side note, I first started gaming with Dragonlance, and while some of the original gaming material for the setting can be embarrassing, it remains one of my favorite settings if only for nostalgia's sake (my first DM was awesome too). Some of the books are good reads (though the original trilogy felt somewhat rushed and inconsistent, Weis and Hickman's later books have been better, the Twins trilogy especially since it concentrated on a select few characters rather than an entire party). The 5th Age kind of ruined the setting for me, and I haven't caught up with the latests books either (I only read the first 2 of the trilogy concerning the return of the gods). But I agree that DL is a better setting to read about than to play in what with the abnormally high number of world-shattering events, that and kender PCs really annoy me (though reading about their antics is another matter entirely).

Spelljammer I have a soft spot for since I gamed in a few adventures with some pretty far out ideas from that setting. That and I really like the later offerings in the Wizardry series of computer games, which featured sci-fi elements like spaceships and even a race of militaristic firearm-toting rhino men. I liked the setting because it was odd.

Planescape I'm somewhat iffy about. A lot of the ideas I like; plane hopping has a lot of potential for adventures and something I want to explore more with my custom setting. As for Tony's art, I rather liked it since it reminded me of Amano's ethereal style of art from Final Fantasy fame. But the pervasive cant was a real turn off (berk this, barmy that). If I want smarmy in-your-face attitude and nearly unintelligible cockney slang for dialogue, I'll watch a Guy Ritchie movie, thanks. The demystifying of gods and planar powers is also something I want to distance myself from. Plane hopping should be a high level affair, which is inconsistent with much of PS, but just about right for my game as it approaches levels 12-15.
 


Blackthorne said:
Well, it´s, uhm, just like, y´know...The Real World! There is, like, an egyptian style country called, uhm, Egypt. ;)

Pharaonic Egypt was not contemporaneous with Medieval Europe, so it is not, umm, just like, you know, The Real World.
 

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