Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[40 Year Old Boomer]

To be fair, there are still patches of greenery on Athas (if you don't mind cannibal halflings).

 

[Corn Flakes]

I guess I was just lucky that my GM at the time had more ideas for Dark Sun than just "misery". Our campaign involved the party leading a slave rebellion, slaughtering an inordinate amount of slavers, defeating a local warlord and bringing the water he was hoarding to the settlements around his fortress, crawling through ancient ruins in order to find the McGuffin we'd need to weaken one of the Sorcerer-Kings, going into an unexpected detour through the jungle and almost getting eaten, fooling a tribe of thri-kreen into thinking we were desert spirits (long story) so they'd help us hitch a ride on a giant through the Sea of Silt, and then finally getting back to the city and... the campaign fell apart due to two of the players moving away so we never got to beat the Sorcerer-King. This was in the early 00s, so playing online wasn't an option yet.

Still, it was a memorable campaign because we played it like the Conan movie. Yeah, the world was shit, but we carved a path through it and even made a fair few lives better along the way. I'll never understand GMs who take grimdarkness at face value and assume that just because the world is fucked, it must always be fucked. It's a fantasy game, the players are there to change the world to begin with. That's the entire point of the game. Either the players find their own things to do in the world (the party being mostly former slaves gave them plenty of motivation to kill slavers), or the GM provides them with threads to follow. If the players want to kill a Sorcerer-King, then by all means let them. It's not going to be easy, it'll require a lot of leveling and preparation along the way (and more than a few casualties and possibly a TPK or two), but there's nothing saying it's impossible or that the world must remain static. Hell, Sorcerer-Kings fell to "normal" people in the novels and fluff. If the game provided a stat sheet, then it should be able to be killed.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).
View attachment 4763462
Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

Hm. I'd heard of most of the TSR stuff.

Greyhawk
Mystara
Ravenloft
Dragonlance
Forgotten Realms
Spelljammer
Dark Sun
Birthright
Council of Wyrms
Planescape

Doesn't mean I'd played in all of those, mind.

For WotC:
Ghostwalk
Eberron
Ravnica (MTG tie in, ugh)
Strixhaven (magical prom, ugh)
Radiant Citadel (wussified Sigil, ugh)

Honestly, I liked the Ghostwalk concept even if I didn't get the chance to play it. It seemed interesting.

 

[AnOminous]

I'll never understand GMs who take grimdarkness at face value and assume that just because the world is fucked, it must always be fucked.

If the scenario is grimderp it should always be improved by adding some humor. Taking it seriously is retarded. Why play a game that makes things even more depressing than they already are?

 

[robobobo]

Athas as a whole is fucked, but it was possible to un-fuck it on a local level if you drove off all the Mad Max rejects and took care of what little natural resources remained. The trick is that arcane magic tended to despoil any life within a radius of the caster, so you had a bunch of "fuck you, got mine" wizards running around shitting up the place for easy power and keeping the place from going further downhill was very difficult. But Dark Sun isn't a wholly hopeless setting; it is pretty grimdark, but the setting did present methods for so-inclined people to try to carve out a better life.

Planescape is hard to quantify, because it's a whole big-ass pile of infinitely large universes, any one of which could hold an entire campaign with ease. I assume that a plane-trotting party bouncing in and out of Sigil on short adventures was relatively common as Planescape games went, but really that setting could go in any direction whatsoever. Similar for Spelljammer, the setting had no handrails so a DM could do whatever wacky shit their imagination came up with.

 

[Ghostse]

The trick is that arcane magic tended to despoil any life within a radius of the caster, so you had a bunch of "fuck you, got mine" wizards running around shitting up the place for easy power and keeping the place from going further downhill was very difficult.

There's a fine line between WotC's Gay Furries of Crystaltopia where the only thing for PCs to do is ensure no white people appropriating african culture, and "there's no water, the forests are shrinking, everyone's a slave, and if you cast a spell everything around you dies". And.... I forget what horrible thing happens to you if you try to kill a wizard king. It was either the wizard king takes over your body or it upsets the delicate balance of power or something.

I mean yes a DM can do whatever they want with a setting, but that's down a DM. You can go off the rails with Space Portland too if you want, or turn Strixhaven into really be a project run Strahd, but that's not really the setting.

 

[Gingervitis]

Al Qadim is missing from the list.

I folded all the subsettings into their main one. I believe Al Qadim is part of the Forgotten Realms.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Anyone done a review over that Hc Svnt Dracones furfag game here, yet? If not, I can write one up; the game came out with a new edition recently, and I've got quite a bit to write about, if anyone's interested.

 

[Fag Albert]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).

Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

I kinda wanna sidestep
1. Most of the TSR ones and Eberron
2. Ravenloft
3. Forgotten Realms lives forever in my head as high fantasy CWCville

I would like to sidestep to ask a question of some of the UK kiwis here; I've heard about Pelinore and it seems like it holds a special place in the hearts of a fair amount of gamers. To those that did play it and love it, what made it so comfy for you?

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).
View attachment 4763462
Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

1. I've heard of most of these (and have the sourcebooks for them too). Have never specifically played in any of them though. One campaign I was in did use the map of Eberron's main continent, but it was a way to have a map for the setting we were playing it; it wasn't "Eberron" per se.

The only ones I've never hear of of are Theros, Mahasarpa, Jakandor, Pelinore, Dragon Fist and Council of Wyrms.

You did forget to mention Exandria (Critical Role's campaign setting which received official support by WoTC) and Masque of the Red Death (which, granted, is considered a spinoff of Ravenloft, but its effectively its own setting and is the only campaign setting set on an alternate version of Earth).

2. Now, I've never played any of these settings, as I said, but I like the concepts of Planescape and Eberron, if only because they aren't just generic fantasy. I think Forgotten Realms is just hilarious because old boy Ed basically turned it into his officially supported Magical Realm.

3. As for settings I like the least, mainly the newer woke settings (Radiant Citadel and Strixhaven) are ones I don't care for. I was also never all that particular about Nentir Vale, though that maybe because of my bias against 4e, which it was the setting for.

Edit: Grammar and spelling

 

[Judge Dredd]

I folded all the subsettings into their main one. I believe Al Qadim is part of the Forgotten Realms.

I didn't know that. I like those kinds of fantasy Egypt settings. Al Qadim seemed to be a fairly standard one of those.

I think Forgotten Realms is just hilarious because old boy Ed basically turned it into his officially supported Magical Realm.

What's the story there?

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

What's the story there?

Basically, Forgotten Realms is the personal creation of one Ed Greenwood (its also technically the oldest campaign setting, having been created all the way back in 1967). When Ed sold/licensed (can't remember which) Forgotten Realms to TSR, he was given a sweet deal over it, that remains in place to this day. You see, even though Ed doesn't have full creative control over the setting anymore, he has outsized control compared to other creators. He gets final say over any changes made to the setting (so nothing can be changed or removed without his permission), and anything he reveals or adds to the setting is basically canon and TSR/Wizards can't contradict him. He has used this to basically turn the setting into his own little Magical Realm, via info he's "revealed" in (semi-) official Forgotten Realms forums, and its all official and canon because of his very generous agreement with Wizards of the Coast, ensuring that they can't contradict him, or else the entire setting reverts back to his control.

1d4chan had a great breakdown of all the crazy shit he's made officially part of the setting, and links to the forum posts where he's said it, but the site is apparently down right now. So, I'll give you the archive instead (go all the way down to the part that says "Forgotten Realms and sex" near the bottom). In fact, I'll just copy that here verbatim for posterity's sake:

The current Forgotten Realms material is highly sanitized from Ed's original vision. In FR as created by Ed:

• Bi-sexuality is normal (and yes, this means the men as well as the women)
• Transgenderism is encouraged by several deities so that priests can experience life as the other sex
• "Revels" (some of which involve sex) are normal
• "Festhalls" (many of which employ prostitutes as staff) are relatively common and visiting them is the normal way to spend evening.
• Prostitution is a core industry of Forgotten Realms; "sex workers" are all over and there are about 40 different names for different kinds of prostitutes.
• Incest is a normal way for noble families to "indulge feelings of mutual affection" (poor people don't as they can't afford the contraception)
• Pretty much all of the immortal NPCs in the Realms have come to believe that accepted sexual norms are bullshit, so they flout them. Constantly

All of this is confirmed by Ed Greenwood himself, from Ed's responses to fan queries on the Candlekeep forum. So Saith Ed here, here, and here. It's also all completely, 100% canon thanks to Ed's ludicrously favorable contract.

Of course, this isn't exactly out of place in certain historical periods and cultures (Per example the Greeks, the Etruscans, were particularly known for having frequent orgies, Canaanite religion frequently involved cross-dressing (which may be why the Bible forbids it) and the nobility of many cultures like Hawaiians and the Ptolemy Egyptians practiced sibling incest so as to avoid muddling the bloodline with peasant genome; Rome had all of the above at various points), so some individual cultures or nations with this going on probably wouldn't be off the mark, and notably, the post that included the stuff about incest also included that Ed himself is against incest... but when the whole damn world is into this stuff, it's not treated as a problem, no one questions it and there's no sign of things changing, then clearly the author has something on his mind.

In short, the Forgotten Realms are Ed Greenwood's magical realm cleaned up by TSR and later Hasbro for general consumption, and the Romantic Encounters mod for Baldur's Gate is probably canon.

As of 5E, WoTC has decided to embrace the first bullet-point, there are random bits of homosexuality everywhere. Two men sharing a bed, a married pair of male porters and married pair of homesteaders, a gnome settlement with two kings, and a shopkeeper with nonbinary pronouns all appear in 5e adventures. An attempt to Retcon the massively corrupt and crime-ridden city of Waterdeep into "Seattle during Pride" was actually met with significant backlash.

No regular orgies in every village yet, but Rime of the Frostmaiden does feature a completely inbred town.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

Isn't Radiant Citadel the one where they hired nothing bit nigs, spics, Injuns, and [insert your favorite racial slur here] as writers to get that authentic PoC flavor? Or am I thinking of something else?

 

[ZMOT]

I know nothing about Shadowrun that I didn’t learn from the video games but I very, very much want to run a game set in Chicago when the insect spirits show up and the town gets walled off.

Source:Burning Bright

Burning Bright is a Shadowrun novel by Tom Dowd. The novel is a prequel to the events covered in Bug City sourcebook. It focuses on the Chicago takeover by the insect spirits and the subsequent destruction of the city. Kyle Teller is an Amerindian mage hired to find the missing son of a wealthy...

shadowrun.fandom.com

enjoy

rest of the books are pretty good too (some more then others, but I don't remember an absolute bad one). I'd go as far and say anyone into cyberpunk or fiction in general should read at least a few of them.

'Nentir Vale' is called 'Points of Light' and IIRC is to take place in the same universe as (I believe) Forgotten Realms or Eberron but a different world or continent.
Its my favorite setting because its got that right level of "Everything is fucked so there's alot of adventuring to do, but its improving and players aren't just bailing water on the titantic until hell invades or the elder gods eat everyone's mind" - as long as you stick tot he material plane. The feywild/Shadowfell are fun ideas but too much a of a junk drawer of concepts. Feywild was an attempt to clumsily bold-on Celtic fey mythology, and the Shadowfell writers couldn't decide on a tone.

all I remember from NV was basically "here's a bunch of stuff with a lot of nothing inbetween".

which I didn't mind since that approach certainly worked for the OG settings, otoh it's not enough for consoomers who grew up on video games and drip-fed content.

Isn't Radiant Citadel the one where they hired nothing bit nigs, spics, Injuns, and [insert your favorite racial slur here] as writers to get that authentic PoC flavor? Or am I thinking of something else?

yes

 

[Adamska]

There's a fine line between WotC's Gay Furries of Crystaltopia where the only thing for PCs to do is ensure no white people appropriating african culture, and "there's no water, the forests are shrinking, everyone's a slave, and if you cast a spell everything around you dies". And.... I forget what horrible thing happens to you if you try to kill a wizard king. It was either the wizard king takes over your body or it upsets the delicate balance of power or something.

I mean yes a DM can do whatever they want with a setting, but that's down a DM. You can go off the rails with Space Portland too if you want, or turn Strixhaven into really be a project run Strahd, but that's not really the setting.

It's "The Sorcerer-King fucking yeets you and all the others and then tries to ruin and destroy and rip apart every person who ever knew and or liked you for having the audacity to try and weaken and destroy them". You guys play up how they can be killed and were by normies. That's a hideous joke. The weakest one of them statted was still easily into Epic level (CR 22), and they're on average over CR 25. This also ignores the templates slammed onto them due to the corrupting force of arcane lore that turns them into monsters, which also gives them supernatural powers along side all the mystic might of an unchained high level wizard.

And that's ignoring the cult of personality and state around them as well. Most of them either through charm, fear, and just pure inertia have entire state cults that venerate them as gods.

Now if you get strong enough, and you plan it out and do basic things that might throw off dickhead mages, I'd say you should get a fair shot stabbing them to death. It still ain't fucking easy though, and deaths should happen during that fight.

 

[Ghostse]

all I remember from NV was basically "here's a bunch of stuff with a lot of nothing inbetween".

which I didn't mind since that approach certainly worked for the OG settings, otoh it's not enough for consoomers who grew up on video games and drip-fed content.

I will readilygrant you there was a ton of "fill in the blank" with NV, tons of "This happens because of shit all the way over there", a time line that had some issues (The Minotaur kingdom being only 300 years ago?) and some of the cooler locales having nothing done with them in official setting. (i.e. Temple of the Yellow Skulls & Fastormel Ruins are only explored in the 4e novels iirc, and I don't think the sword barrows gets addressed ever) and in general some stuff that doesn't make sense if you think about it overmuch.

But its a great sandbox to turn adventurers loose in and lost of places for the GM to insert whatever you want

 

[Tactical Wizard]

That’s actually one thing I greatly respected about 4E. They had a brand new setting for the world and the rules that came in the core books.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

I have a question I’m asking out of curiosity. I have a list of every officially published D&D setting, minus the licensed settings. All subsettings (Hollow World, Blackmoor, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, etc) are counted as part of their main setting (Mystara and Forgotten Realms, mostly).
View attachment 4763462
Out of all of these:
1. Which setting(s) have you heard of/not heard of? (whichever answer is shorter)
2. Which setting(s) do you like the most?
3. Which setting(s) do you like the least?

1) Birthright, Council of Wyrms, Jakandor, Mohasarpa, Nentir Vale, Radiant Citadel I do not know. Technically Pelinore too but I knew about that from the non-RPG side.
2) Eberron, Dark Sun, Ravnica and Ghostwalk.
3) Strixhaven, Dragonlance

 

[Corn Flakes]

Anyone done a review over that Hc Svnt Dracones furfag game here, yet? If not, I can write one up; the game came out with a new edition recently, and I've got quite a bit to write about, if anyone's interested.

I'm surprised that shit sold enough to warrant a new edition. But I follow furry drama so if you'd like to take one for the team, I'd like a review.

It's "The Sorcerer-King fucking yeets you and all the others and then tries to ruin and destroy and rip apart every person who ever knew and or liked you for having the audacity to try and weaken and destroy them". You guys play up how they can be killed and were by normies. That's a hideous joke. The weakest one of them statted was still easily into Epic level (CR 22), and they're on average over CR 25. This also ignores the templates slammed onto them due to the corrupting force of arcane lore that turns them into monsters, which also gives them supernatural powers along side all the mystic might of an unchained high level wizard.

And that's ignoring the cult of personality and state around them as well. Most of them either through charm, fear, and just pure inertia have entire state cults that venerate them as gods.

Now if you get strong enough, and you plan it out and do basic things that might throw off dickhead mages, I'd say you should get a fair shot stabbing them to death. It still ain't fucking easy though, and deaths should happen during that fight.

Agreed. Sorcerer-Kings are the archetypal BBEG and should be treated as such. They're the final thing a party goes up against after a long campaign, and whether they win or lose it should be memorable.

Just like going up against a fully-powered Lich, Demilich or Ancient Dragon in Forgotten Realms, it should require a lot of preparation and at least one Not-In-The-Rulebook legendary artifact to help level the playing field. And you only get one chance so better make it count. Hell, Rykus (a 15th level Gladiator in the AD&D version), with all his plot armor and a party backing him up, still needed two (technically three) separate artifacts to down Kalak and then Borys.

This applies to all BBEGs, actually. Simply walking up to Vecna and slapping him around because the party is just that overpowered is silly. So is going up against a Tarrasque, a creature whose battlefield role should be "walking natural disaster", because "we've got the hit points and damage to outlast it". I don't know if it's just me getting old and cantankerous, but I'm getting really bored of this videogame-like mentality of "just walk up to the boss and punch it until it falls over". I'd much rather have some kind of setpiece encounter (bring an item to the altar behind the BBEG before he can glass the party, for example) than a straight up fight. Not everything should be about the numbers, even more so in newer editions where the numbers become meaningless after a certain level (or a certain combo) is achieved.

 

[Gingervitis]

You did forget to mention Exandria (Critical Role's campaign setting which received official support by WoTC) and Masque of the Red Death (which, granted, is considered a spinoff of Ravenloft, but its effectively its own setting and is the only campaign setting set on an alternate version of Earth).

I intentionally excluded Exandria, simply because it’s owned and created by Matt Mercer. Thus (I assume, I could be wrong), it’s a licensed setting. I included the MtG settings because with both properties owned by WotC, the point is moot.

I completely forgot Masque of the Red Death though. I’d still put it down as a subsetting of Ravenloft, but I’ll admit that it sounds like a neat concept.