What's your main official campaign setting, and why do you play in these rather than your own, completely homebrewed one? Doesn't have to be D&D. Greyhawk, Planescape, and Dark Sun fulfill just about everything I could want in designing cool fantasy adventures.
Greyhawk is just generic enough for people to get that it's "generic fantasy Europe", but actually has a pretty cool history and lots of baked-in plot hooks at every level of play. Planescape is my weirdo pick for cool psychedelic adventures, and Dark Sun for brutal, survivalist S&S games.
>inb4 make your own setting you fat moron
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I know it will contribute nothing to the thread but you've made me realize that I haven't played a single session of any official material for any of the ttrpgs I've been involved in since I started this hobby a decade ago. Did running official settings/campaigns/episodes or whatever used to be more common? I've existed in a landscape of pure homebrew (except of course for the base rules and mechanics) my entire young fa/tg/uy life.
I honestly have no idea, I can only speak for myself. I use a official material when an idea I have has already been done. Lightens the workload, and I can still change it as much as I want.
>Lightens the workload,
Funny, I've always found it to be the opposite. Less interesting too. I'd rather just crib ideas from official material to include in my own setting.
If it's any help, I never used any official setting or material, not to mention scenario, since joining the hobby in '98. It was always homebrewed or even outright ignored. The sentiment in the area I come from (and it used to be a common sentiment for the entire scene in my country) roughly translates as "Why the frick pay money for playing other people's adventures?"
>Did running official settings/campaigns/episodes or whatever used to be more common?
It used to be less common. Back when I started, two decades ago, almost everyone had his own fantasy world, and it was expected that you house rule in some unique races or whatever to flavour shit up. These days, the only people who still play Pathfinder do so using adventure paths, and it fricking sucks. Dunno about 5e, because I don't play it.
Hey, my group still plays Pathfinder. Because d20pfsrd has all the rules and we act like we’re still broke college kids that can’t afford books. We do occasionally play Traveler or Shadowrun 4e, which we do have books for.
>Did running official settings/campaigns/episodes or whatever used to be more common?
People played many computer games in the settings and then read the novels. They wanted to play them in the tabletop as well.
There were 2 Ravenloft rpgs, 2 Dark Sun plus a primitive MMO, many Forgotten Realms and some of the other settings, even a super lame spellhammer one. Mostly Faerun of course eventually.
After a few years you may have made your own setting.
>Did running official settings/campaigns/episodes or whatever used to be more common?
it was the standard for the generation that played the computer games and then read the novels.
My first time DMing anything other than a oneshot was the Dragon of Icespire Peak module. I didn't stick too closely to it, changing things as was either more interesting (family connections between NPCs, changing the nature of a skeleton follower to being more personal to the PCs, the entity the orcs summon to something else more challenging) or to be easier for the players to acclimate to (local deities being replaced with equivalent Greek/Roman gods, having a couple of sessions before the module to create a hook as to why they're hunting the dragon, etc).
After cutting my teeth on that, I've started just making a general world map and then freeforming everything within it. My group seems to enjoy the sense of discovery of filling in the map themselves.
I actually do run my own setting. We do FATE Spirit of the Century in a fun weird Arabia run almost entirely by oil companies. It's fun to do dieselpunk with actual punk in it.
The party are freelancd "troubleshooters" hired to handle any number of problems - Bedouins attacking oil extraction camps or sabotaging pipelines, companies quietly sabotaging or stealing from each other, rescued kidnapped white slaves from evil Arab sheikhs...
I like the Forgotten Realms. It feels big and real, it has dozens of countries and multiple human ethnicities, plus elf and dwarf etc sunrises that are meaningfully different beyond having +2 to INT instead of DEX.
Forgotten Realms. It helps that we're a couple campaigns in with my friends, so references to prior campaigns and characters blend together with references to the setting--the abundance of characters and events allow for plots to emerge that none of us (we rotate our being DM) planned for but have looked like they were set up years in advance. I miss substantial lore being available. 4E has some good setting books, and you can piece together things from what WOTC remembers to write in 5E, but it's definitely been missed potential for several years now.
My go-to setting? Why, Equestria of course.
Alright, what are some things I can pull from Equestria, sand off the edges, and see how blatant I can be with this before my players realize what it's from?
Powerful immortal demigod rules the chief country, and has power over the celestial bodies.
Mostly-monoethnic kingdoms, enough so exceptions are the talk of the town.
Dark magic is actually divine magic.
A 10-year-old is one of the most dangerous villains in the setting.
I forgot that has official games
golarion, we play pathfinder (both editions)
the system is baked into the setting (you could make your own but you're still restricted to shit that works with the rules like clerics), and I have no qualms about changing shit I don't like and telling lore buffs to frick off
What have you changed? I know basically nothing about Golarion, except that elves are aliens or something.
My own setting.
I've never tried to run a game in a pre-established setting before because my autism will not allow me to frick up presenting the world, so I just make my own settings.
It used to be Eberron but I lost the will to run 3.5 and made my own system and homebrew.
I guess Forgotten Realms. Last 4 games we've played, 2 were FR, one Astromundi, one my setting (right now the games we're playing are my setting and Astromundi, but that's just what we were having fun with and the group that stayed together).
Forgotten Realms is fine and other people connect with it so, if I'm running something for people who are new to the hobby or new to the group, it's a good place to get started. It's familiar to everyone and that makes it a little more fun for people who maybe haven't got any other connection to D&D. I do run it out of the Gray Box, not any later WotC editions that I feel get too zany.
I run my own setting. It's called Legends of Hystar and is essentially a redesign of an older setting I created, updated to use in ACKS. It's a standard Basic D&D setting except I reskinned halflings as tanooki.
What would do the class rankings for the settlements mean? And what would be a Class I or Class II?
>What would do the class rankings for the settlements mean?
The size of the market. In ACKS, equipment availability is limited by market class. For example, you only have a 25% chance of finding a riding horse or suit of platemail for sale in Class V city, but will easily find one for sale in a Class III city. Market class also affects how much it costs to recruit henchmen, mercenaries, and specialists and how many of each can be found in that market.
Class I cities would be like Rome, Paris, London. Medieval megacities with 250k+ people.
What software are you using?
I mean for doing hexmaps like your pic, but also wikis and so on.
I use Hexographer Pro to make the base map, then use The GIMP to add text and other effects.
I don't make use of wikis or anything like that. I run the game on Discord and have a Lore channel where I post stuff in an increasingly disorganized manner.
>I use Hexographer Pro to make the base map, then use The GIMP to add text and other effects.
Thanks anon
>on Discord and have a Lore channel where I post stuff in an increasingly disorganized manner.
lol based
Do you have the ACKS 2e books? I've been dying to get my hands on the playtest stuff because ACKS 1 is scattered across about 60 different sources. Love the system but it sure needs to re-release the core rules.
Nope, I'm still juggling 1e books.
Frick, so I guess that's the best that can be done. Damn that Macris, he's just made an update on his Kickstarter that makes me imagine we won't see true core books (and thus any of 2e) until the fall. The guy who runs the OSR trove is for some reason deathly opposed to uploading playtest materials even though the playtest rules are off to print, and he managed to piss off the one guy willing to upload 2e stuff by refusing him.
I've used the Latter Earth setting from WWN for non-WWN games. Quality of each country varies but I love the pulp science fantasy aesthetic.
Forgotten Realms. I started there because i couldn't afford setting books, and the wiki covered most things. We started in the 2e continuity, and the Realms have changed with over a decade of campaigns and 350 years in-game.
- The Dales are now a participatory democracy thanks to a guerrilla campaign by PCs.
- Sembia is a sans-coulette Bonapartist dictatorship by a former PC.
- Bears in much of Faerun were awakened by a PC druid with the Awaken spell.
- The Purple Dragons rule Cormyr ala the Mameluks in Egypt (PCs accidentally killed the king).
- Waterdeep was sacked and Luskan rules the Sword Coast (evil campaign).
- The Dales, Cormyr, Sembia, and the Zhentarium are in a fourway cold war space race (high level campaign).
- Tiamat briefly escaped and devastated the southern Sword Coast (Rage of Dragons campaign).
- A paladin of Eilistraee was crowned queen of Menzoberranzan and Lolthites are scattered (Out of the Abyss, with lots of Queen of the Demonweb Pits and War of the Spider Queen.
Current campaigns are 50 years ahead of the official timeline and there are descendents of earlier PCs as current PCs and NPCs.
I think this is the way to go with FR. Take one version and make it your own, disregard anything new (unless you can make it work).
I like Forgotten Realms, major modules all place there, and I know the major cities, and it has the right possibilities for adventures as far as D&D systems are concerned.
Eberron. I like dieselpunk, and its already pretty close to what I'd come up with myself. I run it closer to cyberpunk. Dragonmarked houses are megacorps, grafts as cyberware, etc. Also use pathfinder rules so guns are a thing. Just find/replace crossbow with musket, and that's usually enough.
1430 Europe with some changes
Greyhawk, Warcraft, and Eador.
>why do you play in these rather than your own, completely homebrewed one
I've played in both, and the advantage of official campaign settings is that players can more easily interact with them. Especially as a player, making a character for a homebrew setting is completely dependent on how much a DM has written and how much they're willing to share.
Meanwhile, official settings are chock-full of interesting ways to integrate character concepts into the setting, and I just need to run the idea by the DM rather than interrogate them for a morsel of background lore I can torture to death.
I run My own setting called Oreise completely homebrewed. In middle school I misread an English homework assignment. Which was "Write a climactic scene" as "Write a story with a climactic scene". So over the course of a week I wrote an awful 70 page story before realizing the actual assignment, but in that I wrote what I imagined as the climactic scene. But during that time I realized I loved writing and I would develop a fantasy world. Later in middle school one of my friends introduced me to dnd and I replaced him as a dm and knew nothing about dnd settings and stressed over where the game would take place. Found an old map I made for the now books I had written and haven't looked back since.
It's been about 6 years since then and never really looked back and with that it has changed over time. Initially it was far more wacky and random anything goes type of setting but over time it has slowly formed into a more historically inspired epic fantasy. One thing that has kept me going is fairly early into it's creation I had an idea that until very recently in the setting's time each continent was separated allowing for each continent to effectively be a world on it's own. I still write and worldbuild which helps me make new campaigns and engage players in the world.
Greyhawk is pretty dark. I understand you can do whatever you want in your own game, but most people in Greyhawk are dirt poor, there are no luxuries, life is hard, the balance of power is on evil's side.
In Forgotten Realms there's always a hero wandering around to save people in need. In Greyhawk you're on your fricking own.
If you play it by the book it's not generic fantasy at all.
>Greyhawk is pretty dark. I understand you can do whatever you want in your own game, but most people in Greyhawk are dirt poor, there are no luxuries, life is hard, the balance of power is on evil's side.
>In Forgotten Realms there's always a hero wandering around to save people in need. In Greyhawk you're on your fricking own.
>If you play it by the book it's not generic fantasy at all.
this, Greyhawk is the antithesis of Forgotten Realms
>D&D
FR, specifically the Moonsea region (Hillsfar and Melvaunt) in 1372 DC (It's the 3.x one). I also made a game in Aglarond and a couple in the Silver Marches.
>Stormbringer
Obviously the Young Kingdoms but also some other plane of reality (i made the pc stumble in the Saxif D’an's one) and mostly in Lomyr.
>Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
The empire (duh), specifically in the Nordlands and Averland-Reikland (starting the adventure in Nuln from "the Oldenhaller contract").
>Lord of the Rings
Moving between Arnor, Angmar and Rhovanion
>Mutants & Masterminds
I could only manage to run a single introductory adventure in Emerald City. I want to move to the Marvelverse though in future (nothing set beyond the 90s continuity though, i don't care to learn stuff beyond what i read in my teens).
>GURPS
Well, frick me... Ok, in Banestorm i set a game in west Megalos, specially near Hyrnan and the Blackwoods, in Conan i used the Kull era and run a game in Valusia, then i run a Wild West game (i think it started in Nevada, i don't remember the date) and a Pirates of the Caribbeans one (started in Port Royal in 1718 AD).
>Rolemaster
Well, ackchyually merp with the arms law and spell law plugged in, anyways i run one game set in proto-mystara, specifically here: http://pandius.com/drgnsden.html
>Savage Worlds
Still a work in progress, i plan for an indiana jones game set in south america and i want to try also a fantasy one (i'm homebrewing a setting from scratch).
>What's your main official campaign setting, and why do you play in these rather than your own
I have one of my own, had two more but they were incomplete and served as training for the one i ended up completing.
We played Mystara, then Faerun, then Dragonlance, then Greyhawk, then Dark Sun, then Ravenloft, then very little Planescape, then Call of Cthulhu, then Werewolf the Apocalypse, then very little Vampire the Masquerade and some other stuff. Then for a few years we played on my own.
It was fun. If we played today, if we decided to start a long campaign and not just one shots, then we would play on my own 3.5e or Dark Sun 2e. I had asked players a few years ago if they wanted to do a year of basic D&D, they said no. My main group played Pathfinder after D&D 3.5, another went to 5e but would go back 3.5 if we started seriously.
They don't want to play Mystara cause they think its too generic and has no novels, or too few.
They want to play Faerun due to the novels
They don't want anymore Dragonlance cause they played plenty of it and read a ton of novels oddly
They don't want Greyhawk cause it has very few novels, if any
They don't want Dark Sun cause we would play it in 2e
Ravenloft fits everywhere
Planescape as a base everyone loathes, its a joke at best.
Call of Cthulhu, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Vampire the Masquerade and some other stuff are for breaks between the main campaign sessions.
>Greyhawk
is much better than Forgotten Realms, you can do wars and politics and things like that much better than the mess faerun is as a setting.
only forgotten realms i would do is a campaign in the
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Moonshae_Isles
>What's your main official campaign setting
so from the official ones, it would be greyhawk. You can start at the city of Greyhawk and its all very comfy.
Last time I was in the DM seat it was south Greyhawk that launched into Planescape.
It was basically my first game ever that didn't have yet-another newbie at the table that needed to be hand held and told how the rules worked.
>"Oh you did read the books? Ok. But you still keep forgetting the rules? Sigh..."
I digress anyway...
It was great. Everyone knew the settings, knew what they could do, I just said "GO." I didn't know what to think the first time it happened but seriously I learned the greatest god damn thing in gaming was having your player come up to you and say "We want to go here" or "do this" and it was some left wing thing I've never heard of cause I didn't make it.
I ask my players "Why are you going? When what how?" As per usual delay tactics, took the next week to dive in and research the hell of whatever they were talking about, and next session I had a whole session based around something I didn't know about 8 days before.
I suppose I need to stress that in contract to playing a homebrew where: -Players want to do something. - They ask if said thing is around. -You weight it in your head of your setting, -"Yeah we have this this or this location" -Player: "Oh ok. We're looking for this." or "Oh... that's not exactly what we're looking for."
What I'm trying to say is that I had a group of players that were self-initiating to go and research stuff on their own. They came to me, the DM, with something unexpected and unplanned, and we had a great time doing it. That's not to disparage homebrews (which I am currently playing in!) where the GM (hopefully together with the players) make the setting.
It was nice to have the players driving and discovering something new, which just can't happen at all in homebrews. Everything is from the DMs head which the players can only know by asking you, or maybe you wrote it down. But in a preestablished world, where the DM doesn't know everything, players can surprise YOU and it was fun as hell.
Um yeah. /Ramble.
Currently playing as a player in a homebrew for the last year and some. It's fine, I am having fun, but a fellow player has recently lamented exactly my previous post about how he liked that about my game.
Now since he's said it I find I'm frustrated sometimes cause I when I want find out literally anything setting related, I have to convene with the DM about it and I'm fighting for attention at a rather large table full of over pro-active players.
>why do you play in these rather than your own, completely homebrewed one?
the advantage an official setting has compared to a homebrewed one, or a disadvantage depending on how you use it, is that the players in past at least knew it from other media.
They can visualize and in general have a river of data for it from other sources.
A homemade setting is unknown to them.
Dark Sun reminds one of Brom and other artists and has a style, it had the computer games and the novels.
The homebrew is a vague generic assumption for most players.
Homebrew setting is a computer text adventure of the 80s vs Official setting is a CGI filled game from today. B
>why do you play in these rather than your own, completely homebrewed one
After the Temple of Elemental Evil computer game, players wanted to play greyhawk and were more into 3.5e.
Sadly even after Game of Thrones TV series, players wanted to play in that setting. Which kind of sucks balls since it has very little magic and monsters and stuff like that compared to most settings.
Because they saw it with their eyes on the tv screen.
>Planescape
except this, everyone we played with liked the computer game but the tabletop setting sucked utterly.
Almost all the official adventures sucked, the text sucked and hurt your eyes reading it, the language sucked. The races and factions were bizarre and lame, bariaur couuld not fit into most places and tieflings were half-fiends. The interiors artist was great but not for planescape, as he fits for fairies and thigns like hat but he made everything flimsy and fading away. The setting made the special and super rare into a mundane thing. Supernatural beings on the streets, as if they were actors in suits. And many other things.
Deva Spark adventure, this was utter junk and most of the rest.
Well our team started off in Faerun... but at the beginning of the 3rd session we were in Ravenloft/Barovia
As for why we play there, we got through this really grueling dungeon we'd heard about, opened a chest in this big tomb we'd fought a ghast and a bunch of ghouls in at like 2nd level, and all that was in it was a single coin with some butthole's face imprinted on it. Mist flew out of the chest and when we left the dungeon we were in unfamiliar woods surrounded by fog that the tiefling found out can choke you. Many sessions (and killings) later, we're still searching for a way home.
i play almost exclusively in my own setting, but dolmenwood is pretty cool if your looking for one.
Frick off OP, I have only ever played in homebrewed settings.
I run a setting based off the Dominions video game series using Macchiato Monsters, it’s a great source of inspiration cause the games have thousands of ‘miniatures’ that I’ve pulled into role20 and autisticly organized based on my head canon. I go for more of a sword and sorcery vibe than a fantasy feel, and I think somewhere between the early and middle age fits that well. I’ve got a pretty dope map too since it’s a hex crawl but it’s still a work in progress for regions outside of my Mediterranean-pastiche.
sounds cool, anon
I wish i could have a Mediterranean game
Eh, to be honest I’m mostly running them through premade OSR dungeons and stuff that have been reskinned to fit my setting, so it’s not that great…but them having a (mutineered) ship and hopping from island to island and along the coast makes for a pretty open campaign which has been cool.