Obscure D&D Settings

Everybody remembers Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. Let's talk about some of the more obscure or one-note settings from D&D's past - what you loved, what you loathed, how you'd update them to 5e , whatever.

Man, I'd kill for a 5e Spelljammer book, if only because I've always wanted to DM/play in a Spelljammer campaign.

Birthright was cool and could use an update.

Ghostwalk was... interesting. It probably was worth a second book but apparently didn't sell worth shit so it never got one.

Council of Wyrms was a thing too and could also use some love.

Mystra: I don't know so much if I want the setting proper or just a conversion of all the gonzo races it embraced. Swashbuckling wolf-people, samurai catfolk, shapeshifting magical spiders, raccoon-monkey-flying squirrel hybrids, refugees from the dream realm... so many weird races for spicing up homebrew.

Planescape: Give me a Sigil Adventurer's Guide with the skinny on the City of Doors and plenty of new planar races, maybe new archetypes/PrCs to cover membership in the Factions or Sects... it's not like they need to give greater mechanical crunch to the planes than the DMG gave us.

Birthright: Mass combat or literal kingdom building rules would be awesome; there's a reason the Kingmaker AP for PF was so popular.

Spelljammer: Maybe it could be retooled as a sourcebook for generating star-fantasy campaigns, but still, love to see this come back.

Red Steel: Technically this is part of Mystara, but the idea of red steel mutations could be cool to adapt to 5e.

Dragon Fist: It's a wuxia setting that ISN'T Faerun's boring Kara-tur region. AND it actually belongs to Wizards, so there's no legal hassles.

Ravenloft: I don't know if I want this or a new "Dark/Horror Fantasy" setting, the RavenloftD20 version was interesting, but always a bit too... fixated on its Neo-Victorian aesthetics for me.

Also, while technically not obscure, I'd kill to get 5e sourcebooks for Eberron and Points of Light - I mean, bloody hell, they practically had a Nentir Vale Gazetteer at the printers!

You know they already did Ravenloft in 5e

I wanna see some fucking DARK SUN!

No, they did the Castle Ravenloft adventure module in 5e.

The Ravenloft campaign setting, which TSR did for AD&D and Sword & Sorcery polished for 3e, still remains lost in limbo.

Ravenloft is a lot bigger than Strahd and his castle, if given the chance to be.

...Come on, surely there's anons who wish 5e would get out of the Overhyped Realms by this point...

I enjoyed the crossover with Gamma World. The post-apoc vidya Wasteland had just come out and was very hot. I could use the rules I knew for a setting I knew, it was cool to explore.

...

Ravenloft is the real shit imo. You have to be ok with playing a character who will suffer and likely meet some tragic end, but its a great setting.

Everyone I've talked to in the real world and online is very critical about Spelljammer. I don't know why exactly. It seems like a cool concept. Maybe just not implemented very well.

Same here. I've been looking at some fan-made 5e material for Dark Sun, and editing it to my liking, but I wish there some was official material already.

>Dragon Fist
Had to look into it, but it looks like Wizards don't own it anymore. Damn shame, since I'd like a wuxia setting.

I mean, it makes sense from a marketing position to use Forgotten Realms, I suppose, but I'd like to have some smaller supplement books for different settings and rules to use.

I wish they would adapt Dark Sun in 5e...
adnd is old and 4e is boring : /

Council of Wyrms is the shit.
We'll never see it again, it's to fucking weird.

DragonMech was also awesome. I've been pushing around the idea of converting it to 5e for some time.
I've even started, if only just a bit.

What's the deal with frostburn?

Can someone tell me what they like about Dark Sun so much? I think its cool that its so different, but every game I've played has been pretty shitty, just very dull situations and too much combat. It might just be the DM we had, or maybe just not my cup of tea.

Combat is up to the Dm but DnD is a combat heavy system

What do you mean by dull situations?

I'm aware, but I've played more than enough D&D games in other settings to know what to expect of combat. In the few Dark Sun games I played, its mostly one fight after another. Nothing could ever be solved with diplomacy, no matter how high we rolled.

Bland dungeons, money didn't seem to matter and power seemed to impossible to gain, as even if we had a ton of gold we were still common scum in the eyes of the law and aristocracy, everywhere we went seemed to pretty much be the same place as where we left. More or less, nothing we did mattered and every thing was monotonous.

I would chock that up to a bad DM, the dark sun power level is lower than traditional DnD though it's up to your DM to keep you invested

Yeah, I don't mind the lower power level. But I agree it was the GM just railroading and not accounting for any player agency. To be fair, I don't think he was particularly experienced as a GM. I'm just not sure what a Dark Sun game would normally be.

Constant combat is the sign of a bad DM. Dark Sun was supposed to have lots of diplomacy, in the "what can I do to make you not stick me in the gut?" sense.
Sort of like the old pulps it was based on.

For me, Dark Sun was one of the first D&D settings I was introduced to ditched most of the common tropes in most settings, and felt "alien" to me.

Admittedly, the first time I ran a Dark Sun adventure it was terrible (it was also my first time DMing an adventure). It suffered a lot of the same problems you mentioned here . Non-stop fights, a bland dungeon, battles took too long, no non-combat solutions, and the harsh environment stuff hardly ever came up. The whole thing was underwhelming mostly due to my lack of experience.

Dark Sun pls.

I hope you didn't beat yourself up to badly, all GMs have to start somewhere, and you can't learn without making mistakes. I've run a few really bad sessions as well, user. Chock it up to experience.

Question; would anons accept Weird War 2, the D20 game that Pinnacle Games put out about playing in a WW2 setting where magic and monsters are real and have been woken up, as a D&D setting?

Because I really am interested in adapting it - and its Savage World kin - to a 5e game. I could use zombies, apes with Nazi brains, ghost tanks and other such critters for my own Dieselpunk games...

Nah, I didn't beat myself up. I learned from it. Another aspect that didn't help was that all the players were more experienced than was (at playing and at DMing) so there was a lot I needed to learn. What helped was getting a new group of players who were all new to it or didn't play in decades. I've been this groups primary DM for years (with a few other people DMing as well). Overall, I'm satisfied with how things have turned out, and I'm excited to return to Athas.

>a WW2 setting where magic and monsters are real and have been woken up

Sold.

I own the original D20 versions - only on PDF, sadly. It was technically low-magic - you had a fancy new system for casting spells that caused fatigue, and the only offensive spells in your arsenal were Magic Missile and Cloudkill - but it had incredibly thematic monsters. I wish I had some physical copies of the books...

I got a link for the Savage World verisons (WW2 with some new books, WW1, Weird Vietnam War, Weird Wars Rome) - should I see if I can chase up a link for WW2 D20?

>Ghostwalk
Hell to the Fuck Yes.

I miss Al-Qadim.

Some Dark Sun, Planescape and Ravenloft would be awesome.

>Planescape: Give me a Sigil Adventurer's Guide with the skinny on the City of Doors and plenty of new planar races, maybe new archetypes/PrCs to cover membership in the Factions or Sects
Because Sigil's in the DMG anybody could just up and publish a Guide to Sigil to the DM's Guild. I'm a bit surprised nobody's done that yet.

The impression I get is that Xanathar's Guide is the first part of that effort.
Also there is the extended open playtest of Artificer and Mystic, which will let them segue strongly into Eberron and Dark Sun once they finally get those nailed down.

A member of my group has been mentioning Birthright for some time.

What can you fine Anons tell us about the setting that is not already on the 1d4chan page?

I always liked Dragonmech, as goofy as it was.


>Ghostwalk
Mah Nigga. That always struck me as really cool.

Eberron, Planescape, and Dark Sun are my trifecta.

Points of Light was really cool. I miss it.

Sorry, I don't know much beyond that it was an extremely Celtic-inspired setting with the PCs intended to take the roles of literal god-kings.