What's your favorite established setting? Least favorite? What's the last one you've played/currently playing?

Which 5e races do I need to ban for a lore friendly Greyhawk campaign?

From my admittedly limited understanding of the setting? Dragonborn, Genasi, arguably Tieflings (though Iuz the Old is himself a half-fiend), arguably Drow (though they do exist), Ghostwise Halflings, Duergar, Svirfneblin, Goliaths, Tabaxi, Lizardfolk...

Really, I think all you're actually allowed are Humans, Mountain Dwarves, Wood Elves and Lightfoot Halflings.

Everything that wasn't a core race in 3.5e

Dragonborn kind of exist in Greyhawk but not in the same way they do in Forgotten Realms. They're not a race but the elite of the Bahamut cukt that get transformed via some fetish hatching ritual into dragon people and still retain features of their original race. A gnome or halfling dragonborn would be almost indistinguishable from a kobold for example.

Although every GH game I played, people seem to work Goliaths into them, but I can't find them in any sourcebook or on the wiki.

Someone please explain the Goliath thing. But yeah just keep mary sue shit like aasimar, tieflings, and genasi out and we're good.

I remember reading the Dragonborn thing in the 3.5e Dieties and Demigods book, never tried it in a campaign though.

Does it just border too much on magical realm?

I like FR, especially from an economic point of view, they down play the political intrigue so you have more room to use it or not and there is a good number of cultures to pick from so you can make something a little bit different without being a total snowflake. The problem is...
>every swamp/mountain is full of trolls
>every wizard is a dick
>every organization is run by a Chosen
>every nation state is run by a fighter with lots of points in Diplomacy (Save when run by a Chosen)

GOD TIER
Greyhawk
Planescape

HIGH TIER
Eberron
Ravenloft
Dark Sun

MID TIER
Forgotten Realms
Mystara

LOW TIER
Dragonlance

RANGES FROM AMAZING TO THE WORST SHIT EVER
Homebrew D&D setting

Where's Lankhmar?

Yeah, I have to put Points of Light as one of my favorites. It's got a lot of background stuff without being so heavy on the details you don't have room for a GM to make stuff up as they go. It's a nice level of fuzziness where it's solid enough for a player to latch onto stuff but not have page after page of history to read.

>Planescape

The only thing I liked was the artwork.

>Dragonlance

I concur. Good maps, though.

I really want a campaign where the PCs start in a normal material plane like Oerth or Toril but then via dimension hopping shenannigans go to Planescape. When they get done with whatever they needed to do there, they try to go back home, they take a wrong turn at Alberqurque and wind up in a deliverately and ironicaly bad Homebrew setting which they then need to fight their way out of.

>What's your favorite established setting?
PoLand
>Least favorite?
Gonna have to say Greyhawk. It just doesn't "click" with me.
>What's the last one you've played/currently playing?
Ravenloft

I literally came up with an idea in the last 24 hours to have a Dark Sun style "death world survival neo-barbarian" type setting, with the Big Reveal at the campaign's climax being the PCs figuring out that their "world" is actually the body of the megalithic demon prince Codricuhn the Blood Storm, so they've been living on his body, drinking his blood and minding the chains that bind him for generations and he's never even noticed them, because he's just that ridiculously huge.

Anyone think this is a viable homebrew setting concept?

Points of Light isn't a setting; it's an idea for a setting. They never made it or even gave it a name.

Just run Discworld

thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=15210

Really?

Listen, the shut was never properly organized by WotC but it is a setting, user.

Post sourcebooks, never played.

Ironically though people associate this heavily with FR it's largely because they tend to have no idea what RP's outside of D&D looked like during the early-mid 90's period of gaming.
EVERY game during that decade was filled with overpowered NPC's everywhere while RPG authors put in their shitty rejected novel ideas into game storylines that nobody really wanted.

3e FR had the same problem, but only because they tended to literally copy-paste entire texts from older edition material to fill space in the FR core book except in areas where tie-in novels contradicted it. It was easy to do because most of them didn't even have stats, just something stating they were "level Whatever Race Class".
Honestly, Wizards was lazy as fuck about that crap.

>EVERY game during that decade was filled with overpowered NPC's everywhere while RPG authors put in their shitty rejected novel ideas into game storylines that nobody really wanted.

It really fucking did look like that.
I wonder what game started that fad anyway?

I just got into FR as of 2015, so it's still got all its charm for me. Probably my favorite as of right now.

But I grew up obsessed with Kyrnn. Plus side, no faggot orcs. Donwside, faggot kender and tinker gnomes.

>faggot kender and tinker gnomes.

God, how I hated that shit.

Hell, Gully Dwarves were a hard sell as well.

>Dragonlance
>Shit
Nothing wrong with it's low magic, not at all, except the age of mortals which looks like a complete clusterfuck, Kender don't really seem as annoying as people put them out to be, as I've been reading it and whathisface with the glasses only does mildly irking things.
The fucking time travel part is hilarious though, eh, kender breaks space and time going back in time to break time travel so everyone can use it.

Forgotten Realms is pure garbage, and it literally at this point on par with the very over saturated MMO that sells it's 5e content in casualized cash shop form.

Fuck the spellplague, fuck every level 20 wizard in that setting, fuck the constant rewrites, re-inclusions and focus on that setting, You don't write more than 500 books on something like that and think it is anything but unnecessary . Fuck Thay, Fuck 420Drizzt, Fuck Baldurs gate and Nu-baldurs gate, fuck Lathander and his faggot exvampire elf, Fuck Khelben and his multi-elf whore, just fuck the Forgotten Realms, Tharizdun needs to be released to purge that setting clean, or at least reduce it to it's low magic 1e BG self again with sparse landscapes, and enough vibrant cultures that one does have to travel for over time.

Dark Sun and Eberron are both fantastic.

That's a fan-made map and a link to a fan site. You're making my point for me.

As for Gully Dwarves? Eh, I liked that it showed Raistalin actually adhering to politeness in use of Charm spells, because they make the affected think your besties, and he was nice enough to whatsherface when using it to show he had goodwill in his actions.

You see that- is how I want all wizards to use spells, roleplaying the effects as they're mentioned in context- it's grade a fucking easy to save someone from a Vampires Domination, because it literally seizes a person's freewill, and they become aware of it and fully co-operate with a party after because vampires are careless highly generic Chaotic Evil sociopathsin print and common behaviour, but if that vampire just so happened to be social, went out of his way to fill the blanks the spells he uses and powers he employs covers for, so that it becomes that harder for the thrall to discern what is lie and what is truth, it presents interesting moral dilemma, especially if they were being groomed by the vampire as a Blood Ghoul, or if the vampire released his hold on the subject multiple times to have it act of it's own will to perform actions for him meaning they were responsible for what they do, next to well placed diplomacy rolls, debate, and sometimes spells to add in convincing false memories and stories for the vampire and thrall to go by, it becomes hard for the subject to accept whether or not they have any choice at all, or technically even submit to the vampire out of logical conclusion based on evidence being fed to the subject.

That's why the like of spell components, importance of incantation and room for roleplay is so important to casters in D&D, without this, they're missing a layer of storytelling and detail.

It's one thing to be made subject to a mind-affecting spell, another to identify this consciously and dismiss ones action to the spell and the user, but another thing to accept and ignore this fact because the person you talk to is, very convincing, compelling or likable.

And next to this, we've the diplomacy and social related skills in D&D and the fact one can cast spells with Somantic components using bluff to weave them in during conversation as part of FR canon and also as class features for the D&D Jester related Classes as a part of the Lore, Even Kingdoms of Kalamar had this unique twist.

So imagine getting charmed by a guy haggling with you already posing a convincing argument, who was also bluffing and casting a charm on you to take this home as he get's social with you and the spell made you feel like best freinds, despite him already getting that far with you in coversation anyhow.

A multilayered sandwich of force of personality.

When used right, the like of Mind-affecting spells and psionics do wonders with these kinds of detailed wordplay, and people sacrifice this kind of stability the instant results a spell provides. People tend to forget that races that tend to adhere to might makes right tend to accept the fact that if they end up under mind-control, it's their own fucking fault and the right of their master to control their fate, but splicing in acknowledgement under the guise of companionship and better currying for loyalty and the like makes this all the more sweeter.

Imagine a LE Vampire Psion Thrallheard who knows of Blood ghouls and the 2e Vampire Bride ritual, he'd be swimming in pussy and blood to go and people would LIKE HIM. Oh right, that was actually a thing in 2e, Psion Vampires are so mentally strong they don't go full Buffytard vamp and actually get shit done.

>as I've been reading it and whathisface with the glasses only does mildly irking things.

Kender, when they are done well, have the player remember that the 'No real sense of property' goes both ways. A Kender is the first to offer to give something to someone who needs it more than they do and should be more interested in...well, interesting things than valuable ones.

Kender Society is more or less 'Communism if everyone was actually naive enough to not game the system' mixed with the usual halfling sense of community. Tools and equipment is something that anyone uses, if they need it. After all, it makes no sense for that hammer to just be sitting in the workshop if someone else needs to hammer in a nail.

A decent short story for the Kender perspective is one back during the years of the Kingpriest with the half-kender son of a Knight trying to apply to become one. He's shitty at the rules part and does stuff like 'Borrow the good parade lances (After blunting them) to help replace the training lances that were broken by some other students' as he doesn't understand having them sitting about in the armoury if they haven't had a parade in decades but he's genuinely got the heart of a knight.

He's eternally willing to stand up to the bully among the trainees for the others because they are his friends and family, even if he gets beaten down every time because that's what you DO for other people. He also holds to the Oath better than most of the others as he's idealistic to honestly believe the idea that swearing 'My honor is my life' is something to be part of your life, even if others are not watching.

He does end up leaving as even he admits that he can't understand the purpose of so many rules in the Measure and ends up becoming a Cleric.

Mind you, the number of people I've seen play Kender without just using it to justify being a dickass thief who takes valuable things because 'lol random theft is in character' I can count on one hand.

Yeah, it seems to be a PC related problem. A better prerequisite to Playing a DL campaign is to provide PC's with the option of Reading the first books up to the death of the first Dragonlord, or to watch the kinds badly animated film that at least got most of the stuff right, and the voices down I guess.

The Wizard going "Oh god, I just sent a Kender BACK IN TIME." Was fucking hilarious though.

Favorite D&D setting is Dark Sun. Favorite non-D&D setting would be Hallow from Legend, but it died before they could actually make it.

>The Wizard going "Oh god, I just sent a Kender BACK IN TIME." Was fucking hilarious though.

The story about the knight has a similar moment. A Knight pondering his son's intention to join the Clerics of Istar, imagining just how much chaos it was going to cause to those assholes and just laughing long and loud. Afterwards he goes and writes a long and glowing letter of recommendation, saying that the pointed ears are because he's half-elven.

Any player whose Kender responds to an accusation of theft with denial isn't playing a Kender. The proper response is "you must have dropped it, I you should be more careful," or "no, that's my , but you can borrow it," or some kind of cute denial of responsibility and return of the property in question.

Moreover, any player whose Kender steals something based on value is not playing a Kender. Kender care about how interesting something is, not what it's worth. A character's starting trinket is much more likely to be of interest than a pile of boring old gold. Other races care about that stuff.

This, they've got to pick up things that look interesting from description alone, or are in places hard to get solely because they wonder what justifies the reasoning for the concepts of security and ownership it's for curiosities sake, not for personal gain.

A kender's that one party member you notice has hoarded random crap that somehow becomes useful ages and ages later because it didn't seem important to use at other intervals when it might have been the main idea to do so. I get why people say they're a race of PCs, because I sometimes do that in videogames with Items I never figured out were useful until later and have immense fun with.

4e Kender would have worked well with a racial power that was something like.

>What do I have here?
>Encounter, Minor Action
>Produce a consumable item of your level or lower. If you do not use it before the end of the encounter, you misplace it and it is lost.

Something more tied to 'I collect random interesting crap' than 'I steal your things'.

Kinda like Meowth's ability in Pokemon.
Wait, that's actually a great idea.

If i was to ever play an immortal level basic DnD game id be tempted to Sigil as a base of operations/holding area for aspirant immortals to stay in between missions from their patrons.

More or less.

4e Kender (Halfling Subrace)

>+2 Diplomacy, +2 Thievery (Replaces existing skill bonus)
>Endlessly Loyal: Kender take a -5 penalty on attack rolls against allies and provide a +3 bonus when making Aid Another actions rather than +2. (Replaces Nimble Reaction)
>Collectors: You may use the 'What do I have here?' power as an encounter power

>What do I have here? Kender Racial
>Encounter
>Minor Action Personal
>Effect: You produce a common or uncommon consumable item of your level or lower. If this is not used before the end of the encounter, it is misplaced and considered lost even if it has been given to another character.

That's what I'd do with them to show off parts of them other than 'I steal things!'

Half of loyal is very situational but good in that situation (Kender are very unlikely to hurt allies with AOE spells/alchemists fire/when dominated) and the other part of it makes them a great helper in non-combat situations.

The Lankmar Books/stories are great. Some of the role[lay source stuff does not do the setting justice

I'll include here some fantasy settings adapted to RPGs:

>HIGH TIER
Middle-Earth
Warhammer's Old World
Conan's Hyborian Age

>MID TIER
Greyhawk
Westeros
Ravenloft

>LOW TIER
Forgotten Realms
Mystara
Glorantha

>SHIT TIER
Dragonlance
Eberron

Blackmoor if you can find it. Sadly the truly oldest setting gets little love these days.
Birthright suck the most.
Greyhawk I have a love/hate going.
AQ Jern which is only played at Purdue Univ, but has 30 years of history

>That's a fan-made map

You do not how sad seeing that post made me feel. Lankhmar is a fictional city in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber. They predate D&D. If you can find them then read them. The guys that make Word Of Darkness reprint some of them in the 1990

Which book would be the best if I know nothing about Greyhawk except the basic premise

>What's your favorite established setting?
Been favoring WH40K, but because I was fluffing some stuff for a change of what I usually write.

I also like Spelljammer and Dark Sun, but more as examples of something different yet that can fit in your standard setting if one really, really makes up a whole world. No reason to have one single desert, ya know?

>Least favorite?
Tormenta. Brazilian one, really disappointed me as a former fan.

>What's the last one you've played/currently playing?
My homebrew. I'm one of the players and the loremaster.

Reread that post. I was asking where it is on the ranking. I know about Lankhmar and its author, and own around 10 D&D Lankhmar books.

Dark Souls, Dark Sun, Ravenloft are my favorite.

Everything else is too samey for my taste, for the most part. This is in terms of actual RPG settings. Literary stuff is usually the best of the best.

Favorite: Greyhawk
Least favorite: 2nd/3rd Forgotten realms. Too overpowered.

Birthright's fine, it just got very little love compared to most other full settings. Still got more than Spelljammer, but that's not saying much. It was a great idea that didn't get nearly enough development as a playable setting.
There's a couple setting books you could read. World of Greyhawk, From the Ashes, the Greyhawk Player's Guide, Greyhawk Adventures... World of Greyhawk has all you should need, in itself, the others just add to it. Many of the classic adventures are set in Greyhawk, too, like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Against the Giants.

Infernum fuck yeah! So hard to find people who like it.

Wow, and here some user actually got he reference! I thought I was, like, the only person in the world who had a copy...

the sixth world, easily - albeit with some minor modifications (orcs tend to be green, goblins aren't that rare and are pretty widespread on certain countries and share the green, the metatype variety is more tightly knit than 90% human and 10% the rest)

for some reason, plain cyberpunk doesn't really do it for me, but the concepts shadowrun presents are right up my alley

shame the system itself isn't everyone's cup of tea, otherwise i'd actually get to run it sometime

Wilderlands > Eberron > Spelljammer > Al-Qadim > Ghostwalk > Mystara > Dark Sun > Maztica > Forgoteen Realms (just the first boxset) > Blackmoor > Council of Wyrms > Kara-Tur > Greyhawk > Birthright > Planespace > Ravenloft > Dragonlance > Forgotten Realms

Yeah, that's the funny thing. In 2e, as long as you steered away from novels, or the shitty adventures, you could do a lot in the Realms and not even notice the NPC bullshit; the rulebooks tried their best to steer around it (with several unfortunate exceptions - we can't talk about the Dumbest Mongol Invasion Ever without bringing up our NPCs, for instance). But the 3e book made that uber-powerfulness front and center.

Honestly, I think it does trickle out from DnD to the other games, but I think it originates from Fucking Dragonlance first; the 'War of the Lance' adventures were railroad as fuck, and became even moreso when the novels were published. Somehow, we decided that this was the correct way to tell stories in a world, and nobody bothered to correct anyone about it until long after Samuel Haight and Bayushi Shoju were inflicted on us.

Greyhawk was supposed to fit all of AD&D's monsters and races, I see no reason Dragonborn can't come from somewhere foreign or from one of the uninhabited regions.

Goliaths are from a 3.5 ed book, so they are assumed to be part of Greyhawk. But mountainous part-giants easily slots in.

Can a Greyhawk fan sell me on Greyhawk? I've tried reading the original stuff for it, and while it's neat, it's just lacking that 'spark' for me. I'd like to know what I'm missing.

Neat!

No, it's an official WotC map for a board game set in PoLand. The fansite, by the way, sources every piece of it's material on published 4e material.

Well let's see, it has the real St Cuthbert, who stumbled into the universe and became the deity of Frontier justice, namely the kicking down the door to purge and get shit done kind who is well received by frontiersmen and farmers of lower eduction, A god of Sun and healing who'll be glad to help you if you're out to purge evil who once helped a village fight off a vampire attack and coming down in person to make the most anti-vampire daggers to ever exist, the deitus daggers, which force a will-save of loose all your spawn bloodsucker, who is very zealous, may be the God of humanity under alias, indicated by the fact he literally has Morally grey Paladins under his service as a prestige class. As with FR, a lot of the humans in Greyhawk are actually from our world at different time periods ported in because X race (Elves) wanted some slaves, so now we've mayan, Aztec and Olmecs forging a pretty neato empire once upon a time over there. They once ported in a Cowboy named Murlynd the first played paladin in D&D who is basically an anethma to the system D&D presents, so when he casts spells they're this horrible merger of psionics and arcane with Visual SFX that border steampunk because of his technological understanding as a high Fantasy cowboy with magic whip, pistol and desire to preserve technology to benefit everyone.

The god of knowledge is a pretty neato guy, and this is the setting that Vecna came from, the bashit insane Super Lich who blows himself up repeatedly to forward all planes in all D&D settings, except for maybe ghostwalk and Kingdoms of kalamar.

And this is the prime setting of where Igglwilv, Graz'zt and Iuz are involved, next to Tharizdun, the god of madness who went extra special mad because the Elves opened up the Far Realm and he tried to kill everyone to become a Great Old One using the datamined information from everyone who is mad ever.

It's also the place where there is a gender shift curse spell.

Oh right, this is also the setting where Death Knights are common and the one where Demogorgon likes to play by violently rot-raping everyone with it's intense "Literally just throw all fiend-related splaybooks at the PC's when you fight monkey trouble."

It's also home to the "Fuck your alignments, I shall do all in my power to keep things at a stalemate Mordenkainen and the PC's who were played by D&D's devs, and made most of the named spells you use in D&D."

You've got quite a lot of cultural diversity here, chance for paladins with firearms, Greater Gibbering mouthers, unique vampires, super Deus Veult Humanity fuck yeah guys, a pretty chill god of magic, Angry skeletons and a deity who covers your needs for Cosmic horror with it's Elder Evil, Shogorathot, next to the Ogliarchy of Mavet Rev, and other stuff.

Oh right, and a QT death god and her clerics. Wee Jas is a good girl.

The setting is not nearly as much as a clusterfuck of faction wars and stuff to do in cities that you could end up stuck in one for ages at a time because of all the sheer lore, quests, and history printed for it, and you don't have to worry avout Iconic characters too much, a lot of Grehawk NPCs have a lot less on the gaudy flashy look at me side of things, and the deities aren't limited by the like of Portfolio systems and such if I recall, if they want, they can change the world for the better, and that's a good thing.

Unknown armies is probably always gonna be number one in my book. I dig lovecrafts dreamlands, dark sun, sigil (more so than planescape, a lot of the great wheel seems...useless?) I like some of eclipse phase, and it's more of a vague idea than a setting but I love the basic campaign frame for monsters and other childish things.

Oh, and 40k, but I cannot explain it in a way that will ever get my game group to play it.

Shadowrun is kind of neat too, but I cannot get Into the system. Have allnof the old novels on ebook tho.

Man, this thread is a solid reminder that most people are playing fantasy at the table.

There's nothing wrong with fantasy.

Enlighten me on some settings please
I do understand the concepts of Planescape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer and Birthright. They have a unique feel to it and a feel. You know what you get yourself into more or less, when you play one of these settings

What I don't get is the `generic` settings, I'm familiar with FR but I have no idea about how Greyhawk and Mystara differes from the forgotten realms. To me they seem very similar with names of gods and places etc changed.

Just fantasy ones:

>Top tier
Middle Earth. Specifically, variant from TOR RPG

Various mythic earth settings that are placed in alternate version of history where magic and supernatural exist. Like Pendragon, but I'm personally not a fan of this particular one

>High tier
Glorantha - I love it but it has too many flaws to be top tier. The main, mythic/cultural themes are superb. But they are kind of wasted by pointless wackery here and there.

Greyhawk - best kitchen sink ever, even if I'm not really into kitchen sink. Literally because of what this other user thinks is a flaw Dark Sun - save the different themes, it's problems are exactly the same as with Glorantha

Hyborian Age - overal aesthetics and themes are cool, specifics of worldbuilding not much so.

Witcher Setting - great atmosphere and themes but it lacks cultural depth

>Mid tier
Warhammer Fantasy - I love it the way I used play it (gritty, realistic dark fantasy set in 1500s not!HRE), but that assumes ignoring 80% of the actual setting info which is plain wackery.

Planescape/Spelljammer - unbelievably overrated

Eberron - I don't like it, but I respect it for being consistent within its theme and using stupid D&D rules in a way that makes sense.

TES - Morrowind is superb. Setting as a whole... ugh, even if it has interesting points. So it balances out somewhere in the middle

>Meh tier
Forgotten Realms - literally the embodiment of meh. Playable, but ultimately most of the shit is stupid, boring and pointless. The fact that it's described in detail only makes it worse

Westeros - stories within it are good, the setting not much so. It's bot bland and lacking strong points of interest, and badly constructed with many elements hardly doing any sense

Dragonlance - FR but worse

Dragon Age Setting - boring uninspired shit but it could be worse

>Shit tier
Golarion, PoL - just pure shittery

>Various mythic earth settings that are placed in alternate version of history where magic and supernatural exist.

arse magic comes to mind

I prefwer dark age/antiquity rather than full medieval DESU. Like this shit. Or Age of Mythology setting, even if it suffers a lot from being based on the needs of RTS game.

FR is the biggest cluster fuck, having over 469 books to it's name, not including the actual published game content tat references these, videogames, and the official comic books.

It's a massive setting that has some parts of it's history involving Human Cultures ported over to the setting who built empires and caused deific pantheons to spawn from their faith, namely Nordic, and Egyptian Pantheons.

In addition to it being a cluster fuck of ridiculously high magic and developed geography, it is also home to iconic characters used to sell D&D outright, such as Elminster, Drizzt, Khelben Blackstaff and others.

Deific control and influence over the setting is immense and the place is INFESTED with faction wars, you can't take one step without getting involved with some faith's holy jihad or some political or phiilospohical faction with all the organizations that run in this setting, next to Shadow intelligence wars.

As with D&D, alignment is massively a factor in this setting, where you will encounter the most generic of the generic that adhere to alignment like they came right out the monster manual, and It's a very PC setting with barely any-if at all racial tension that isn't characterized in the most childish way possbile.

The reason why magic is such a cluster-fuck in this setting is because it's use is directly tried to the Goddess of magic who is awful at her job and has caused numerous nigh-catastrophic incidents with the use of the 'Weave' at mortal hand, fucking magic over multiple times causing legacies of uncessary things to spawn as a result, mages are so ammoral here that if you're inventing some magic, you literally have godlike immunity and can even unaware, temporarily become a Lich at a god's behedst if they take an interest in your work.

On liches, well, this setting is so high magic, that they saturate the settings BBEG list, Vampires do fuck all here, and there was even a time where Lichdom was literally he hip thing to do for spellcasters, every average bookshelf having the rites back during the Age of netheril, an age of magic where all the wizards had jackass flying sky castles and could do what they want, until their boy Karsus cast the only 12th level spell which killed the Goddess of magic, not before she salvaged the fuck up before it killed the setting's magic for good and then Magic got nerfed.

It's home to the wholesome unnecessary addition of MORE FUCKING DRAGONS to D&D's so fucking oversaturated it's not even funny mountainous pile of Draconic lore, featuring the cult of the Dragon, a cult setup by the batshit insane Chosen of Mystra Sammaster, a Jackass who got deific immunity because he was developing the rites to turn Dragons into Liches and he had dream of an entire planet flooded in Lich Dragons, and this somehow got the backing of the Evil Goddess of Dragons Tiamat, and he was allowed to do this, and this cult's sheer edgy Scaliefag bullshit has plagued the setting ever since.

The gods, are utter pricks in this setting as they're basically prevented from doing anything selfless or nice because they've got this portfolio system that means they've got to conform to some arbitrary ruleset that amounts, and even then, they were dicks anyway because there was a time when they could do what they want and they brought nothing but misery to the world, so their overseity came in when it was convenient to bitchslap them for their crappy treatment of mortals implementing get faith or die rules for the deities, causing events that forced them to walk the earth and make war on one another fucking up magic again, and also changing entire pantheons and the like.

The setting is so high magic, noble actions of advancement with good intention almost always result in bad things.

Like for example, want gunpowder? Well a god introduced a variant and got nothing but shit for it, and there are plenty of instances where literally every church you can think of goes out of it's way to 40k tier Imperial truth your ass for defying deific influence and control by any means.

Hell, even the good guys are assholes, The Harpers are like, the Jedi Order of the setting, and death is really fucked in D&D, you're either with the gods, or you're getting your soul and individuality recycled in some manner.

Greyhawk is smaller in scope, isn't drowning in utter dogshit fluff and sidebooks like FR, and tends towards being much lower powered. This is despite how dangerous large portions of the land are, making settlements near the Pomarj (a humanoid (monster) controlled region), the Duchy of Geoff, or any other place near powerful monsters fairly sparsely settled. Think Dark Ages post Charlemagne, a land shattered and fallen to infighting and banditry. Add to that an evil, conquering god that walks the world (Iuz), multiple alliances of evil forces like the bandit kingdoms or Scarlet Brotherhood, and humanoids (monsters) building kingdoms as well in the Pomarj. It's a time clearly in need of heroes, but mercenaries will do just as well in a pinch.

What
said are true, but FR does have one up on Greyhawk and its like - FR is severely diverse in regions, climates, nations, towns, cities, governments, magics, evils, etc etc. It's what happens when you have hundreds of books over 40+ years in an absolutely huge world spanning over a thousand in universe years. Basically, if you have some sort of campaign you want to run that isn't strictly far future sci-fi (hell, you may be able to finagle that by reconnecting the Realms to Earth), there's some time and place in FR that you can run it - with sourcebook, novel, or fanwork support.

Yeah, it's pretty much a requirement in FR to state where you're born and raised, which grants you special privileges at the start of the game

Unless you're from Zhentil Keep and you're in Scardale. In that case it gets you killed.

West Philadelphia

Dragonlance had as many books published for that setting, too. More if you count game material. It's literally railroad: the rpg. At least in fr there is some player agency. DL? Nope. The gods forbid you to go over level 18 iirc. Should you do so, you're forced to ascend to the heavens (retire).

>What's your favorite established setting?
50 Fathoms and East Texas University are two of my flavor of the month's right now.

>Least favorite?
WH40k

>What's the last one you've played/currently playing?
Middle Earth via The One Ring

Are we talking Garyhawk, 2ehawk, or Greyhawk Lite? Because the answers vary.

>What's your favorite established setting?
Old MtG.

>Least favorite?
Nu-Magic

>What's the last one you've played/currently playing?

In the planning stages of some 40k stuff.

I'd like to run an OSR game during Fallen Empires or Ice Age one day. Old MTG had such strong flavor that got lost over time.
>the way the flavor text presented Urza and Mishra as unfathomable and capricious gods

>What's your favorite established setting?
First time any setting really clicked with me was when I read Eberron sourcebook for 3.5. I still really like a lot of the concepts from the setting, although I'm far past being enamored with it. But it's one of the settings I can pick up and run with a good understanding of how to present it.

>Least favorite?
I really fucking hate FR. Reading of every sourcebook from every era (1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, 5e) ended up with me hating the everlasting fuck out of that setting. It just bores me until I feel sheer anger from wasting my time on it. And yes, I could name specific complaints, magic, names, all of the obvious dumb shit, but really, my hate is irrational like every true hate.

Oh well, I suppose 1e books had some comfy feel going for it.

>What's the last one you've played/currently playing?
Running Into the Odd default 'setting'. Barring that, humored my friend's bad but well-meaning attempts at runnig WoW. It could be awful if it wasn't funny as fuck.

> Favorite: probably Greyhawk. It's tolerable generic medieval fantasy that you can sort of do your own thing with.

> Loathed: Planescape. Like, where do I even start. The core concept of plane-hopping is great, but wasn't an original idea, and the execution is piss-poor. The flavoring, too, is just insufferable, between the idiotic cockney, the ham-fisted freshman-philosophy Factions, and the deus ex machina of the Lady of Pain. Also, Planescape fans tend to be cancerous.

> Forgotten Realms, as a player of the 'Out of the Abyss' module. It's very whatever, and the DM is ignoring the overbearing god-drama and hideous Greenwoodisms/Salvatoreisms.

So, it's both 'less is more' and 'more is more' at the same time?
I mean, it seems like, on the one hand, it's got less ongoing 'events' to get in the way of the PCs; if they meet Mordenkainen, he's not going to draft them into being his sidekicks while he saves the world (a la Elminster), he's gonna say 'Bigby (or whoever) is being a dick, I'll give you cool shit if you fuck with him)' and that's about it.
And then on the other hand, it has room for weird, gonzo stuff to show up in it, moreso than the Realms, but because it maintains this basic setting idea of a fairly straightforward medieval realm, it stays more grounded then something as crazy as, say, Rifts.
So, the DM has more power to throw in things they find cool, and the PCs have more power to do their own thing - everyone has the freedom to interact with the setting.
Does that sound about right?

Not that guy, but you've just very accurately described my impressions.

Favourite: Exalted got me in to RPGs, and Creation is still probably my favourite setting. It's all over the place, but has just enough cohesion to still have a feel of its own. I'm trying to get into Glorantha, but I don't know the setting well enough to call it a favourite yet.

Least favourite: Honestly, most settings I dislike, I dislike because they bore me more than anything else, so I can't care enough for any one to stand out.

Last run / currently playing: I just ran a short-lived Ars Magica campaign in the southwest of Mythic Ireland. Mostly Kerry, with a brief detour to Limerick. I'm currently playing in a 5e D&D campaign in a homebrew setting.

Bonus "want to play/run round": Rokugan (the upcoming L5R remake has me wanting to finally use my 4e collection), and a homebrew Mage: The Awakening setting loosely based on late '60s California, because I think hippie wizards would be interesting.

Probably.

are you me?