Disclaimer: I’ve never played post-2nd edition versions of D&D, so I have no frame of reference when it comes to stuff like Eberron.
2nd Disclaimer: Old-schoolers – please refrain from leaving death threat comments for my exclusion of the Greyhawk campaign. I know it’s borderline sacrilegious, but I’ve just never found it all that interesting. Honest.
Okay, now here’s my list.
5. Al-Qadim
Yes, technically the land of Zakhara is on Toril, the same planet as the Forgotten Realms campaign, but it always appeared under its own banner during its all-too-brief publication run. It was hard as hell to get a game of this going in southwestern Ohio – the tales from One Thousand and One Nights were not exactly at the top of any of my friends’ reading lists in junior high and high school, but despite this I eventually roped a couple of suckers in to go through a few Arabian themed adventures (call it a mini-campaign). I really enjoyed taking a break from the rut of medieval-fantasy I was in at that time – I absolutely loved the idea that there was practically no racial disharmony in the land (orcs and humans live like civilized folk in the same towns), and I do believe this was my first exposure to kits for the AD&D classes (every character takes a kit in this setting). I’d love to play it again sometime to see if it still holds up or if I’m just using my rose-tinted monocle here.
4. Planescape
Planescape is just beautiful. Probably too beautiful. It’s been so well-written that it can be difficult for a group of players to do the setting the justice it deserves. Its scope is enormous, so it can be virtually any style you damn well want it to be – you want to set an adventure in a land where steampunk meets the stone age? Go for it. Planescape is also clearly the most unique looking of any product EVER put out by either TSR or WotC. The books are just stunning to look at – the artwork is beyond trippy… even the font is out-of-this-world.
3. Dark Sun
A wonderful pastiche of the more apocalyptic works of Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, et al. The harsh desert world of Athas is so ridiculously brutal, and that’s what I love about it. It’s survival of the fittest, and even when you are the fittest, you still might not survive (I’ll always remember when my favorite half-giant character was ambushed from out of NOWHERE by that goddamn Defiler… grrrr). Still, I had way too much fun as both a DM and a PC in the Dark Sun campaigns I’ve participated in. There would be multiple characters getting maimed, tortured, killed, or sold into slavery in every damn session, to the point where the group decided it was mandatory to have more than one backup character ready to go at a moment’s notice.
2. Forgotten Realms
Despite the fact that I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the character of Drizzt, I still manage to enjoy the Forgotten Realms setting (I usually just have him killed off or pretend he doesn’t exist, anyway). Faerûn is a huge, ambitious world – I don’t think you could ever run out of adventure hooks to throw at your players. True, there were a great many supplemental books and boxed sets that came out during its 2nd edition run, but I happened to enjoy most of them (although I admit to ignoring plenty of the overall storyline if it didn’t suit the campaign I was running). One of my favorite boxed adventures of all-time, Ruins of Undermountain, was spawned under the Forgotten Realms banner. Since talk of ‘megadungeons’ is so popular these days, yes, I do think Undermountain is the best published megadungeon of them all. I’ll never get burnt out on that dungeon, I’m always itching to play it again.
1. Ravenloft
I love D&D just about as much as I love classic novels and films in the horror genre, so when the two combined to expand upon the original 1st edition module and form the Ravenloft campaign setting? Wet dream come true. The apprenhension and fear, the isolation of the characters from anything that could even remotely be considered ’safe’, the feeling of helplessness that creeps in when the characters realize the Dark Powers will never release them from the Demiplane of Dread, the nightmares, the terror, the ghosts and vampires and black cats… it’s wonderfully inspiring stuff for this big kid who slipped one too many copies of Fangoria into his math textbook at school. The published modules were great too; I’ve DM’ed Ship of Horror, Touch of Death, and Night of the Walking Dead multiple times, although some of the adventures, Bleak House in particular, were just too damn epic to be run. One of these days, if I can find players willing to put their characters through a nightmarish and harrowing episode of mental torture, I might face my fear and go for it.
6 comments
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March 28, 2009 at 07:33
Ameron
As a long-time DM, I was in awe when I first discovered Planescape. The supplements were arguably the best written things that TSR ever published. The art was fantastic.
It was refreshing to have a campaign setting were we could play all those character who were too powerful for our normal game world. Planescape made the whole “outer planes” concept easy to understand. For years there were monsters I avoided using because I couldn’t find a good reason to use them. When Planescape was released I had my opportunity. Finally the players learned to fear the Githyanki.
March 28, 2009 at 15:06
GamerDude
It’s cool that there are settings out there to fit so many diverging needs. My list would look absolutely nothing like that…well, not exactly like that.
5. Darksun
4. Ravenloft
3. Mystara
2. Greyhawk
1. Wilderlands
There’s a huge gap between numbers 1 & 2, and the rest… I’ve played an enormous amount in Greyhawk and it feels like the birthplace of D&D to me. And I would have to say that Wilderlands is my new (old) favorite.
But these days, it’s all about creating it myself.
March 28, 2009 at 19:53
Robo
My ratings:
1) Greyhawk.
2) Planescape
3) Ravenloft
4) Forgotten Realms
5) Krynn (Dragonlance)
March 28, 2009 at 21:01
David
Aww, no love for Spelljammer. :’(
March 29, 2009 at 10:59
ravenpolar
No love from the old school for Birthright? After Forgotten Realms, BR was my goto setting just because it was so cool to be playing a bunch of PC’s rather than just one.
October 15, 2009 at 01:00
Philibusta
As a fellow old-school player (who believes WOTC ruined the game when they released 3rd Ed.), with about 20 years involvement with this game, I can say this: each one of the settings had their good points, and their drawbacks.
And as an example of how opinions can differ: Everyone I roleplayed with just looooooved Forgotten Realms. And to its credit, it was unquestionably the most detailed setting in TSR’s product line. The amount of material on FR was seemingly endless, creating a richly detailed world.
The down side was, in my eyes, it seemed the only thing they FORGOT was to limit the amount of magic in FR. Everyone in that campaign setting was loaded with magical items. Or maybe it’s just style preference. I believe magic should be rarer than that…that’s one of the things that makes it special and…um…”magical”.
Another drawback of FR was that it WAS so popular. All the regular roleplayers read everything they could get their hands on about it, and so as a DM, when you tried to intruduce some element into the game/campaign that didn’t quite fit into the FR setting the way the books said, you got something like “heey…that’s not what it says on page so-and-so in the Drow of the Underdark Handbook….”
Of course it all comes down to personal preference. And the amount of time and devotion one is willing to put into the game. My own best times playing D&D were roleplaying in unique settings of the DM’s own design. Yes, most DM’s (or wanna-be DM’s) who do this don’t go to the lengths that TSR did, of course, but I’ve run into one or two (other than myself) DM’s who have created settings that are just as immersive as the store-bought settings.