Right now I'm playing in a Dark Sun game with PF rules.
I am working on a conversion for Ravenloft for next year.
My other friends who are DMs tend to run Forgotten Realms.
Last summer I ran homebrew.Oh! I forgot about Dark Sun! Man, I want to play in that setting sometime! Don't know how I feel about psionics, though.
That's like saying you'd like to be a farmer, but you don't know how you feel about the outside. You can't have one without the other, my friend. Side-note: Psionics are friggin' rad.
Golarion all the way! However, the characters in my current campaign own a bar that exists in Absalom and the city of Freeport simultaneously. So if I didn't have Golarion, it'd be Freeport and Greyhawk!
I'm a big fan of the Earthdawn setting, but I'd never use anything but the game system created for it. Nothing beats the thematic appeal of Thread magic.
Wheel of Time and the world of EarthDawn have been my two favorite fantasy settings.
The world is great. Like one of my favorites. The game system is so ball-bustingly atrocious I can't even comprehend how it got published.
My first choice sans Golarion would be Forgotten Realms and I'm presently noodling about a sandbox game set therein. It's my first setting love and I enjoy all the levels of detail and complexities. It can look very simple, but there's a lot going on under the surface and in working on my presently-neglected homebrew I keep running across the sorts of things that apparently Ed Greenwood was thinking about back in the Seventies.
Like many posters above I use Pathfinder for Forgotten Realms game - tomorrow I will master 3rd session of campaign based on Pools Of Radiance computer game. No, not the imposter from 2001, the one and true SSI golden box classic from 1988.
The world is great. Like one of my favorites. The game system is so ball-bustingly atrocious I can't even comprehend how it got published.We have different tastes. I thought the system was an excellent representation of a world with a much higher magic level than Shadowrun. Unlike D20, everyone is magical to a considerable extent, and the system allowed for building items with true history and character.
What exactly did you dislike about it so much? The difficulty in spellcasting?
Actually it is better than most iterations of (A)D&D. The most bothersome are secondary stats, or precisely, that they are checked in the table instead of being caluclated in an easy way from primary stats (but AD&D had the same problem with ability score tables and modifiers) and the dice step table - the later is quite easy in its progression but I don't like calculating dice pool anyway, I usually run out of fingers with higher steps.
Planescape or bust.
This. My setting contains your setting too.
Started with Greyhawk, then moved to home brew that ripped off the Black Company and Donaldson's "The Land". Fun combination.
I lean heavily to Eberron. After that, Dragonstar. But right now I am working up a Spelljammer campaign.
I thought that the universal setting was Amber... I mean, every possible game setting is just a Shadow :)
I use Eberron. I have yet to fun a game in Golarion yet, even though I have the campaign setting.
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Forgotten Realms fr me I've DMed for 1st through 4th editions, droped 4e for pathfinder. we kinda homebrewed from thier, though I just picked up the inner sea world guide and it takes me to some familiar places. I though have played in ravenloft, greyhawk, planescape, and spelljammer, Forgotten Reams is my frist go to for something new even over all the home brew of my friends be it the dungeon of doom, or the isle of dread, it still sucks me back in. It also doesn't hurt i have almost every 3.5 book for that setting, and about 3/4 of 2e for it as well
The world is great. Like one of my favorites. The game system is so ball-bustingly atrocious I can't even comprehend how it got published.I'm a big fan of the Earthdawn setting, but I'd never use anything but the game system created for it. Nothing beats the thematic appeal of Thread magic.
Wheel of Time and the world of EarthDawn have been my two favorite fantasy settings.
We have different tastes. I thought the system was an excellent representation of a world with a much higher magic level than Shadowrun. Unlike D20, everyone is magical to a considerable extent, and the system allowed for building items with true history and character.
What exactly did you dislike about it so much? The difficulty in spellcasting?
I didn't play a spellcaster but two friends did. Mostly it was the dearth of spells to choose from and the near uselessness of 90% of spells. My friend Phil was an illusionist. His best spell, BEST SPELL, was Fun With Doors starting out. Basically make it look like a door is where it isn't, or make a real door disappear. Useless. Until he got Shadowbolt I think it was called, which is like a 3rd circle spell, his magic was nearly useless. And then he just pumped that spell and it melted faces.
My other friend, Chris, played I think it was called a shaman. His 2nd circle spell, not even like cantrip level something, was basically boil water. We played to pretty high level for that game IIRC, and at higher levels he could tie threads to the rest of us for defensive buffs, but have no threads left to do anything else.
The actual probability distribution of the system is BORKED beyond belief. As much as you specialize in something you're still just rolling a couple dice. So unlike in d20 where you roll a d20 and add like 15, you're rolling like a d8 and a d10 and trying to hit 15. Yikes. In theory I like the piercing mechanic, but basically it was too swingy. I could wiff all day with my rapier and then suddenly make someone explode into beef stroganoff.
That's just stuff from memory. It's been 4 years since we played that, but we all openly mocked the system the entire time we played it, including the DM half the time who has every book published.
Does anyone remeber the City-State of the Invincible Overlord?
I recall thinking when I was young that this was awesome, but I came across it again and I am not sure I can use it.
It is massive, but not organized at all. Has anyone used this recently? Or at all?
Greyhawk or Taladas (the other Dragonlance).
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Does anyone remeber the City-State of the Invincible Overlord?
Hells yeah!
I recall thinking when I was young that this was awesome, but I came across it again and I am not sure I can use it.
It is massive, but not organized at all. Has anyone used this recently? Or at all?
The 3.5 edition put out by Necromancer (I think) was very well done, and works great if you also have their boxed set for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and the Player's Guide to the Wilderlands.
It's a very primitive and rough setting, very reminiscent of Hyborea, without the intrusions of 18th and 19th century inventions that one sees in Golarion, Forgotten Realms, etc. It's a really great setting if you're into old school 60's and 70's sci-fi/fantasy/sword & sorcery type stuff like Gardner F. Fox's Llarn books, or the John Carter of Mars series (which I am, very much so). You know, the kind of stuff where it wasn't consider genre breaking to throw in the odd alien overlord, malfunctioning robot warship, or rayguns. The kind of stuff that made Psionics a necessary part of the game.
Plus, it has multicolored people. Not like white, black and asian. Like Red people, Blue people, and Green people. I still have a ton of red-skinned barbarians in my miniatures collection from when I ran a Wilderlands campaign. I love my red barbars.
And the Wilderlands Box Set is fantastic, it has a coded hex map covering thousands and thousands of miles of terrain, with a massive book telling you exactly what is in every hex. Like Hex 1096 has 3 catoplebas (sp?) living in it. Which makes it excellent for true sandbox gaming, where the PCs can just wander around with no idea what they'll run into (and no promises that it will be suitable for their party level).
my own setting, but borrowing from every setting I know.
I'm a big fan of the Earthdawn setting, but I'd never use anything but the game system created for it. Nothing beats the thematic appeal of Thread magic.
Wheel of Time and the world of EarthDawn have been my two favorite fantasy settings.
I also love the fact that the system actually explains how people progress at that meteoric rate -- they're special and it's magic that allows them to exceeed the normal restrictions of pure skills.
I actually worked out a more generic version of ED -- to keep the spiffy system and the pure coolness of treasures and what not - without needing to play in a world where you were constantly worried about taint and horrors -- the "core" ED is a very, very dark place -- I was surprised at how easy it was to come up with a different metaphysical need for spell matrices -- and once you've got that, you're back into a balanced game.
It's goes from high-magic horror/fantasy to super-high-fantasy, but it worked pretty well.
Of course, I also had to add a bunch of spells because one of my players, despite the face he could cast his spells all day and actually have them be useful (instead of a limited, Vancian system), plus having other non-spellcasting talens was upset about the fact that he didn't have like 20 highly situational spells to pick from.
Funnily, now that we're playing PF, one of my characters who was playing a spellcaster switched to a Barbarian because he hated the spellcasting limits.
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That's like saying you'd like to be a farmer, but you don't know how you feel about the outside. You can't have one without the other, my friend. Side-note: Psionics are friggin' rad.
Ah, but I can! It's called hydroponics. :)
Seriously, though, I don't see any reason why I can't completely ignore psionics (which don't fit my personal view of what "fantasy" is) in that particular setting.
Sure, it wouldn't be "canon," but no campaign is canon unless you're the game designer. :)
I thought that the universal setting was Amber... I mean, every possible game setting is just a Shadow :)
I plan to GM Amber game for years but I have problem assembling the party - those who I would like to see playing, knowing the world and such, have no time for playing, ever.
And honestly, playing Amber in d20?! No way. Amber ws, is and should be dicless.
Eberron on the other hand is a setting that I would love to GM. I could even agree on using PF rules, as per Forgotten Realms. Well, maybe when I finish Pools Of Radiance campaign I will be able to convince the party that they really want to create 1st level characters instead of making another campaign for 10th level characters...
That's like saying you'd like to be a farmer, but you don't know how you feel about the outside. You can't have one without the other, my friend. Side-note: Psionics are friggin' rad.Ah, but I can! It's called hydroponics. :)
Seriously, though, I don't see any reason why I can't completely ignore psionics (which don't fit my personal view of what "fantasy" is) in that particular setting.
Sure, it wouldn't be "canon," but no campaign is canon unless you're the game designer. :)
It's more than just not being canon. Okay no Psionics. Therefore there's no Sorcerer Kings who are Psion/Wizards. And no one has wild talents, so how did ANYONE escape opression? You have to jump through a lot of logical hoops to remove psionics when they make that setting what it is. Both mechanically and mythologically.
I can understand not liking Psionics in a fantasy setting, and it's in fact one of the only excuses I'll accept for not liking psionics even though I disagree with it, but Dark Sun is SO FAR SOUTH of standard fantasy anyway. A lot of its direct inspiration/source material is also enmeshed in psionics (Dying Earth, John Carter, Dune). Dark Sun is practically a sci-fi setting. I mean lizard people, insect people, a race from another world (gith). A dying world brought about by ecological disaster. It's friggin' Mad Max! At their core fantasy is "lets pretend" whereas sci-fi is "what if?". Dark Sun asks the question "what if magic slowly drained the world of life?"
If you make your way to Madison, Wisconsin you can see/join our Dark Sun game in action :)
Truthfully, I was ready to quit D&D altogether and someone told me about Pathfinder Beta. ( we played a homebrew FR mix that I had grown increasingly weary of) I was very close to taking a break from RPG's entirely ( I had done so for about three years before).
So with minor interest, I came to the Paizo site. Wow! I was very impressed by the community and the commitment and creativity of the Paizo staff. I read some of Beta and downloaded some of the freestuff ( adventure path player companions mostly ) Afterwards, it was a quick spiral back into the D&D mania, I had not felt for decades. But it was closely attatched to Golarion and Pathfinder together.
If I were to play without Golarion, it would not be a Pathfinder game. It would be someone elses world and a different system entirely. Probably putting fantasy gaming to rest. So, I will say the world is the WH40k and the system..Dark Heresy.
Greg
@Greg Wasson
Yeah. I am about the same way. I still roleplayed with one group, who I still game with, but they were at the time distinctly not-d20. D20 drives me nuts because I like the actual system and like to optimize, so I think about it when my brain is otherwise idle. Since I wasn't playing d20 the games were like 100% casual and social and not about the game itself.
Then I started with PF beta and they had done a LOT of stuff I had houseruled in my own games years ago (sorcerers especially look uncannily like those in my homebrew SRD). And the community here at Paizo is pretty amazing, a fair sight better than the equivalent one on the WotC boards where I never really felt at home.
Here it's like familiar faces.
In the end Paizo is just a company I adore and I'm very anti-brand loyalty so that's a big deal coming from me.
Hmm, in order of preference I'd go with:
1. Open Design's 'Midgard'
2. Greyhawk
3. Forgotten Realms, provided I could mind-wipe all canon beyond the grey box from players who are really into it. I loved the initial work, and though my memory is foggy I'm sure there was some really good stuff prior to the ToT, etc. However, I'd still rather just start from scratch and not break some canon enthusiast's heart when I didn't use any of it.
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Hm...well, i used Eberron and Forgotten Realms during my 3.5 days, but when we transitioned to Pathfinder i made a homobrew called Grey Borders. We mostly play there because it's mostly me who runs games, and i don't really like Golarion.
We sometimes play FR, but of course, not the new, nuked travesty that they call FR.
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It's more than just not being canon. Okay no Psionics. Therefore there's no Sorcerer Kings who are Psion/Wizards. And no one has wild talents, so how did ANYONE escape oppression? You have to jump through a lot of logical hoops to remove psionics when they make that setting what it is. Both mechanically and mythologically.
Congratulations; you've just got me started on my first homebrew setting! Because answering those questions sounds fun (and, admittedly, not terribly difficult).
At their core fantasy is "lets pretend" whereas sci-fi is "what if?". Dark Sun asks the question "what if magic slowly drained the world of life?"If you make your way to Madison, Wisconsin you can see/join our Dark Sun game in action :)
Which is say, it asks both questions at once, really.
I will keep that offer in mind. :)
I've been running a Homebrew D&D-ish game since 1975, based on a world I have been writing in since 1967. Pathfinder is probably the tenth system I've used, and with all the strctural mechanics that have beem revealed since 1999 I can finally integrate some of my 'odd' races to the PC list. A number of folks on these boards have provided 'better' ways of dealing with some Class issues I've had and other translation difficulties.
I got turned off to Published backgrounds when a player bought a copy of a module I was about to run and used it to zero in on THE magic item. It was supposed to be guarded by a high rent skeleton, but when I realized what was happening, I traded it for a low end Lich. Since then, I ALWAYS modify. That said, I can't wait till I can get a new crop of players into Legacy of Fire.
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Homebrew.
I got tired of players telling me the ancient history of my world and how it "had really happened" because they'd read source books I didn't have the money for, or paid more attention to a blurb than I had.
At least in homebrew worlds, I can always say "Sadly, you are mistaken"
Or alternately, when a player has a better conspiracy theory than any I dreamed up, I can appropriate and tweak it.
Years ago I had a new player join my Mystara campaign, after it had already been going for about five years (I started it in 7th grade, so this would have been my senior year of high school). He had the whole GAZ series, and would often try to correct me - especially on Glantri, which in TSR's Mystara is a weird amalgamation of orientalism and Louis XIV's France, with this whole Blackmoor background I didn't use. (My Glantri is straight-up evil magocratic China/Japan, ruled over by a uberpowerful Fu Manchu/Marvel's Mandarin exspy and his armies of ogre magi.)
Everytime he would start arguing with me about how Mystara "really was" one of my players, Carlo (who always played uber-smart wizards), would laugh and say something like "Obviously [character name] has been reading the Colgona Histories, which as anyone with a real education knows are more fantasy than fact." It became a running joke in the campaign that the new guy's character was a clueless know-it-all who was consistently wrong. Sometimes I even changed semi-established campaign lore just to make him wrong.
Often though I would just respond "The campaign setting is not Mystara, it's MYstara."
We play in the Forgotten Realms since the 90s. Even through I like Golarion very much there are just too many great stories untold yet in our beloved Realms to switch any time soon.
Like many posters above I use Pathfinder for Forgotten Realms game - tomorrow I will master 3rd session of campaign based on Pools Of Radiance computer game. No, not the imposter from 2001, the one and true SSI golden box classic from 1988.
Funny, I am currently a player of exactly such a campaign.
#1 Planescape
#2 Iron Kingdoms
#3 Eberron
#4 Golarion
We play in the Forgotten Realms since the 90s. Even through I like Golarion very much there are just too many great stories untold yet in our beloved Realms to switch any time soon.
Like many posters above I use Pathfinder for Forgotten Realms game - tomorrow I will master 3rd session of campaign based on Pools Of Radiance computer game. No, not the imposter from 2001, the one and true SSI golden box classic from 1988.Funny, I am currently a player of exactly such a campaign.
Oohh, what are you doing currently?
My players just started: three sessions with one spent on arrival and foreshadowing problems with Sokol Keep. Second session when they discovered underground passage from Port District to "Slums" District and fought assembly of evil humanoids meeting with priest of Bane and in last session they discovered ritual murder victim (a plot added spontaneously by me after party Witch seduced young acolyte from local temple with a natural 20 on her otherwise unremarkable Charisma check).Next session will be in sunday, 17th, when they will be escorting certain sage to Phlan's ruined library.
I thought that the universal setting was Amber... I mean, every possible game setting is just a Shadow :)I plan to GM Amber game for years but I have problem assembling the party - those who I would like to see playing, knowing the world and such, have no time for playing, ever.
And honestly, playing Amber in d20?! No way. Amber ws, is and should be dicless.
Eberron on the other hand is a setting that I would love to GM. I could even agree on using PF rules, as per Forgotten Realms. Well, maybe when I finish Pools Of Radiance campaign I will be able to convince the party that they really want to create 1st level characters instead of making another campaign for 10th level characters...
Ah, but any setting you play in is but a Shadow of Amber... so whether your players (or even the GM) realize it or not, they're nothing but Shadows inhabiting a Shadow realm, and their lives are as nothing to the Princes of Amber.
Why yes, I am being slightly facetious. Why ever do you ask? :)
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Ah, but any setting you play in is but a Shadow of Amber... so whether your players (or even the GM) realize it or not, they're nothing but Shadows inhabiting a Shadow realm, and their lives are as nothing to the Princes of Amber.
And Amber is just another domain of Ethereals in the Far Marches, created merely by the dreams of men, while angels and demons fight for the souls of humanity and victory in the War.
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We played in Eberron all through 3.x from the day the setting was released. We continued using it with Pathfinder, until the Inner Sea Guide was released, then we moved over to Golarion. So if it isn't Golarion it is Eberron for my group. Unless we are playing 2e, then it is Forgotten Realms.
I do have a map that I found on the internet that puts Eberron and Golarion on the same world. If I decide to mix them it would make it pretty easy to mix the two and easily explain why I have warforged in Golarion.
I think there is also a map that puts nearly all D&D settings(Dragonlance, FR) on Golarion. Some of the country/continent sizes were altered to make them fit, but if you want to run them all on one world that's one way to do it.
I ran a Pathfinder game using the Scarred Lands from Sword & Sorcery as the campaign setting. Didn't use much of the crunch from the setting. Just mainly touched on the fluff. I had the game based around Mithril, City of the Golem.
Have I mentioned lately that Scarred Lands is one of my all-time favorite RPG settings?
However, as much as I'm not actually a fan of Golarion, the adventures Paizo produces are so good I'm willing to tolerate the setting for the sake of a good time.
I mean, I think Hedrad is a better god than Abadar, but I can't imagine running Seven Days to the Grave with the Law-giver instead of the First Banker.
So I guess the answer is that I don't like Golarion, but it's still my PF setting of choice.
I think there is also a map that puts nearly all D&D settings(Dragonlance, FR) on Golarion. Some of the country/continent sizes were altered to make them fit, but if you want to run them all on one world that's one way to do it.
If it's not too much trouble, would you mind posting links to these intriguing maps (for those of us with terrible search-fu on the net...).
Please and thank you.
Oh, as to campaign settings:
(1) Homebrew(s); (2) a modified Forgotten Realms (our first love) with the "Best of" Golarion and Blue Rose added (or replacing certain areas - not necessarily on Faerûn itself...)*, along with Aerenal (and ONLY Aerenal) from Eberron; (3) Artesia.
* Hence the request for links. ;)
--C.
We sometimes play FR, but of course, not the new, nuked travesty that they call FR.
Couldn't agree more. I'm still angry at what they did to the realms.
Oohh, what are you doing currently?
My players just started: three sessions with one spent on arrival and foreshadowing problems with Sokol Keep. Second session when they discovered underground passage from Port District to "Slums" District and fought assembly of evil humanoids meeting with priest of Bane and in last session they discovered ritual murder victim (a plot added spontaneously by me after party Witch seduced young acolyte from local temple with a natural 20 on her otherwise unremarkable Charisma check).
Next session will be in sunday, 17th, when they will be escorting certain sage to Phlan's ruined library.
Well, after a visit at Kovel Mansion we are now preparing a trip to the Quivering Forest. We will bring with us an old magical blade which belongs to the elves there and wants to be returned to it's people - or at least the sword allegedly told so the elven thief who stole it from me. The sword never talked to me. But first we have to catch thief and sword. Our hope is that the elves there will join forces with Phlan or at least help with disrupting the enemies supply lines. After meeting with a couple of them some tendays ago, my hopes are not exactly very high, but to be frank, we're quite desperate. It doesn't look very good for Phlan right now.
And then the council wants us to travel to a band of barbarians north of Phlan and barter for help.
Our DM bases the campaign on the old Ruins of Adventure module, the SSI "Pool of Radiance" computer game, the 3 novels and tons of other stuff he added on his own.
And to be a little bit more on topic of this thread:
As I am a big fan of both Planescape and Ravenloft, I also will use the Pathfinder RPG together with those settings sooner or later.
Couldn't agree more. I'm still angry at what they did to the realms.
With all the news about the declining market share of D&D my hopes would be that one day they sell the Forgotten Realms brand and IP to Paizo. I doubt that will ever happen, but one can dream ;-)
Couldn't agree more. I'm still angry at what they did to the realms.With all the news about the declining market share of D&D my hopes would be that one day they sell the Forgotten Realms brand and IP to Paizo. I doubt that will ever happen, but one can dream ;-)
One can! That would be amazing if they did. I wish I didn't have to convert all the APs to FR. I told my players it would be easier for me if we all started playing in Golarion, but we have been playing in FR so long they didn't want to make the change. I can't blame them either. All of their previous characters live in that world so going to a new world would mean they couldn't encounter them again and such.
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Couldn't agree more. I'm still angry at what they did to the realms.With all the news about the declining market share of D&D my hopes would be that one day they sell the Forgotten Realms brand and IP to Paizo. I doubt that will ever happen, but one can dream ;-)
If that were to happen, I'd prefer it to be a GOOD campaign setting. Like Greyhawk.
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If that were to happen, I'd prefer it to be a GOOD campaign setting. Like Greyhawk.Couldn't agree more. I'm still angry at what they did to the realms.With all the news about the declining market share of D&D my hopes would be that one day they sell the Forgotten Realms brand and IP to Paizo. I doubt that will ever happen, but one can dream ;-)
What is wrong with FR?
Never liked grayhawk myself...