I made my argument for Greyhawk here. It was an easy choice for me, but I readily admit there are other strong choices:
Glorantha, Harn, Forgotten Realms, Birthright, Ravenloft, Whatever the world in Palladium Fantasy is called, Middle Earth, Spelljamer - they all had their own magic.
Favorite world I've never played in or run a game in? The Wilderlands.
Greyhawk was my first, and therefore my first love, if you will.
So, what's your favorite fantasy RPG setting? Is there a setting you want to play in but never have?
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Empire of the Petal Throne / Tekumel.
ReplyDeleteI dig Greyhawk as well, but I'm now digging on both the Lost Lands and the implied setting of LotFP.
ReplyDeleteHarn of course
ReplyDeleteGreyhawk.
ReplyDeleteHarn.
ReplyDeleteBirthright or Forgotten Realms
ReplyDeleteWhile they may be more science-fantasy than straight fantasy, my favorite settings are probably the lost colony ship (ala Metamorphosis Alpha) and Carcosa.
ReplyDeleteAgain . . . Greyhawk.
ReplyDeleteI like Eberron and Ravenloft a lot. I want to run a One shot or two in each for my next DCC game I run and see how the players react.
ReplyDeleteI also really like the Never Winter 4e setting, though I'm not a huge fan of the realms. Dark sun is badass and I wouldn't mind running or playing in it. Never played/ran Birthright but I like it's ideas, and might rip some of them for a Dragon Marked Eberron game.
My last Ravenloft game was in Pathfinder and it was a disaster. So playing in a "lower power" system might make that headache disappear.
I think Eberron would be my one choice if I had to pick though, Hmm...
Greyhawk. Of course. And the folio is my favorite version, as well, though I have some partiality to the boxed set (mostly the changes to "Portentous Runes and Glyphs"; the versions in the boxed set are just better). Nothing from Greyhawk Wars on is worth a tinker's damn to me. What Gary gave us then our own individual campaigns, that's the way it should be. Publishers shouldn't be making the things we bought from them invalid. Leave that to us.
ReplyDeleteOh, right. Settings I'd love to play but never have. Hm. Right now, it would be one or all of:
DeleteStephen King's Mid-World (the setting of his Dark Tower series of novels)
Kenneth Hite's Seas of Dread setting (from GURPS Horror, pirates and sorcery in the Caribbean; also called "Seas of Dread, Sails of Daring")
The Pagan Shore setting for Pendragon (Irish saga)
Land of Ninja for RuneQuest 3 (fantasy Japan in the inimitable RQ style)
Circumsolar Space (the setting of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix stories)
Transhuman Space (another GURPS setting)
the world of Dark Emperor (a strange wargame from Avalon Hill, with round seas and a necromancer warlord)
"Publishers shouldn't be making the things we bought from them invalid."
DeleteI HATE that! It seems like publishers completely trash their game settings every few years in order to sell more supplements. It's a transparent racket. To make it even worse, most game writers seem to have a VERY poor grasp of military matters and things like economics and politics. So when they start to explain exactly HOW their world got trashed by wars and political upheaval, the answers are usually laughably stupid.
Exactly! The worst example, to me, was the way that the Imperium setting of Traveller was demolished in the "Rebellion" story arc. The problem, of course, being that the whole story arc made no sense, and then the apocalyptic resolution made even less sense! So, here we had an excellent setting, full of interesting nooks and crannies to explore, but it all had to be thrown out because of some stupid, inane metaplot that ended up making zero sense.
DeleteThe best setting around, from this perspective, is Hârn, which has a policy of setting all of its product on the same date and never advancing the timeline. They explicitly leave that to the Referee who is running the setting. Though I do wish that they would provide a little more context of the goals of the ruling NPCs, to give the Referee a boost, but that's not entirely necessary.
Greyhawk forever. Good to see so much love for Greyhawk here.
ReplyDeleteForgotten Realms, particularly the gray box and the first couple supplements.
ReplyDeleteAl-Qadim here. Favorite, AND never got to play in it.
ReplyDeleteGlorantha is my favorite. The setting I would love to play but never have is the Star Trek universe ;).
ReplyDeleteOf published settings I love the Wilderlands the most, but in running campaigns I've had most success with Mystara for AD&D, and then 4e Forgotten Realms for 4e D&D. Likewise I like Greyhawk in principle, but have not had good success running campaigns there.
ReplyDeleteI also like Paizo's Golarion but have not run a campaign there yet.
Forgotten Realms, and I don't care who knows! BUT, I've got the old AD&D Lankhmar books and I've never used them...not yet!
ReplyDeleteI had the original FR boxed set and I liked it a lot, even though I never actually used it. It's a solid old school setting, and you can always ignore subsequent releases if you don't like them (which is what I do with everything released for Greyhawk after Gary left the company).
DeleteLong time no play there: Mystara
ReplyDeleteWould like to play but never did with non-CRPG: Thedas (Dragonage)
World I'd love to use and never have? I'd love to try Spelljammer. Carcosa has moved onto this list too.
ReplyDeleteThe world of the Dark Sun, Athas, plus the continuing efforts under the Dragon Kings banner.
ReplyDeleteThe Known World
ReplyDeleteKnown Realms of Áereth
ReplyDeleteFavourite: Glorantha.
ReplyDeleteNever played but would like to try: Usagi Yojimbo.
It would be the setting of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards for me, but I despair of ever getting a group of like-minded people together at the same table for such a project.
ReplyDeleteNow I want to see a mashup of "Fellowship of the Ring" where Gandalf pulls out a Luger and shoots the balrog.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to be different and say the Fading Suns setting is my favorite. I loved collecting the books and reading about it. But I never actually RAN it because there was just too much material to digest. So maybe it wasn't that great after all.
ReplyDeleteOf the settings I've actually USED... probably Greyhawk.
I'd like to try Eberron.
ReplyDelete