Data Sphere

By default the setting of D&D5E is the Forgotten Realms. Which makes sense since it was the most popular in the game's history.

But it would seem WoTC is planing a product with another setting in mind :

« So Chris Perkins may or may not be working on a non-FR based product for 2016. Let's assume for now that he is. Which of WotC's many varied and wonderful settings do you think they should delve into next? Gothic horror? High fantasy? Giant space hamsters? The planes? »

My preference is Dark Sun because its truly different setting but remains within the boundaries of fantasy. Unlike, for exemple, Ravenloft which is Gothic Horror.

Your vote :
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... ng-for-you

Is Eberron part of Forgotten Realms? I forget.

But that's my vote. Always like the great mix of Industrial and Fantasy archetypes present in Eberron.

My RPG group was playing Dark Sun back during 4th Edition, and that was a lot of fun.

Claudius Sol wrote:Is Eberron part of Forgotten Realms? I forget.

But that's my vote. Always like the great mix of Industrial and Fantasy archetypes present in Eberron.

No Eberron was a stand alone setting. It was an interesting beast. But in that vein I prefer the Warmachines setting. It was first released as a d20 game. Its now published by Privateer Press. So no chance seeing that happen for D&D.

Oreet wrote:My RPG group was playing Dark Sun back during 4th Edition, and that was a lot of fun.

Yes DS was a 180° reversal on the usual fantasy stereotypes.

MARC C wrote:

Claudius Sol wrote:Is Eberron part of Forgotten Realms? I forget.

But that's my vote. Always like the great mix of Industrial and Fantasy archetypes present in Eberron.

No Eberron was a stand alone setting. It was an interesting beast. But in that vein I prefer the Warmachines setting. It was first released as a d20 game. Its now published by Privateer Press. So no chance seeing that happen for D&D.

Eh, I've explored the Warmachine seting a bit and find it lacking when compared to Eberron. It's too focused on being Steampunk and not Industrialized Fantasy, if that makes any sense. I'm also a much bigger fan of "magi-tech" as opposed to "steam-tech" or "clockwork". Magi-tech just gives more freedom, in my opinion.

I also loved Eberron and had a small campaign going on with DnD4. But to be honest, I'm absolutely done with crunchy games like DnD.
For number crunching and tactical challenges, I have InfiNity. For RPG experiences there's FATE and such.

Well D&D5 has reduced the crunch significantly. I like it.



I would go for Dark Sun, Planescape/Sigil or Greyhawk. Probably showing my age...

Greyhawk - aka the first default setting was pretty slick but it was abandoned for the more popular setting in the back half of 2ed. I'd liek to go back to it and I think there are some great places to explore.

Ebberon replaced Forgotten Relms as my favorite setting. I'd really love to see them come back here. I was sad when it came out and WotC cut 3.5 off. It really didnt get the time it needed to earn a stronger place which is too bad as the setting we very well frlesh out and had plenty of place for players to muck about in.

Birthright is a brilliant setting that was limited but had some great mechanics. I'd love to see this one come back and get a full treatment with some longevity.

Darksun has a special place in my heart and it my second favorite D&D setting. It was different and the post appocalyptic flavores and themes never overpowered the survalist and hard life aspects that stood at the fore of the setting.

Council of Wurms would be a good return now that the Dragon-race is a premenant fixture since 4ed.

I just don't want Dragon Lance back. It's boring and unless you're the Heroes of the Lance you'll never be as cool or do as interesting things as they do.

MARC C wrote:

Oreet wrote:My RPG group was playing Dark Sun back during 4th Edition, and that was a lot of fun.

Yes DS was a 180° reversal on the usual fantasy stereotypes.

And I'm not a huge fan of fantasy settings. I prefer Sci Fi in my RPGs.

Lone_Pathfinder wrote:Well D&D5 has reduced the crunch significantly. I like it.
I would go for Dark Sun, Planescape/Sigil or Greyhawk. Probably showing my age...

Yes after 11 games I can say that 5E is very streamlined and a lot of the bonus hunting has been replaced by the advantage/disadvantage rule. No grid for combat helps too.

5E feels like what 2.5E could have been had they not gone down the road of 3E...

Oreet wrote:

MARC C wrote:

Oreet wrote:My RPG group was playing Dark Sun back during 4th Edition, and that was a lot of fun.

Yes DS was a 180° reversal on the usual fantasy stereotypes.

And I'm not a huge fan of fantasy settings. I prefer Sci Fi in my RPGs.

I'm a fan of Sci Fi myself but its hard to get people to play anything other than Star Wars - which is Sci Fantasy. We played the WEG d6 version, d20 version and SAGA version. Usually it would last 4-5 games and then players would ask to play D&D again. In the old days I tried getting people into Star Frontiers. Another friend GMed Traveller. But both games crashed rapidly. Recently I tried Savage World with the cyber punk setting Interface Zero. That lasted 4 games...

I have high hopes with the INFINITY rpg because I already have 4 players from the miniature community for a campaign when its ready.

Our weekly RPG group cycles between Eclipse Phase (great hard sci-fi setting) and the new Firefly (space western!). They are both loads of fun in the Sci-Fi genre of RPGs. And if you have someone that just needs to do magicy stuff, Shadowrun might be a good one to try out.

But now we're really getting off topic.

Another fun setting would be the one from Madan no Ou to Senki: Vanadis, aka The King of the Magic Arrow and the War Princess.

Magic weapons (badass ones at that), nations at war or skirmishing with each other, high medieval setting with relatively low magic...

Set in Western Europe during times of war, Eleanor "Ellen" Vertalia, one of the Vanadis of Zhcted, leads the battle into Brune. There are, in fact, seven Vanadis, named for having each received a powerful weapon from the dragon to individually reign over seven territories. The power of the Vanadis invokes dread and fear from their enemies. An earl in the service of the country of Brune, a young archer by the name of Tigre, experienced the Vandis's power firsthand after being defeated on the battlefield by Ellen. However, Ellen chose to spare his life after witnessing his skills, but in exchange, he is asked to serve her.

And that's just the first couple episodes. (Tigre is about on par with that Danish archer whose youtube vid has been making the rounds, and completely hopeless with a sword, spear, or staff.)

As far as the classic D&D settings go, Forgotten Realms is easy to handle, and kinda the default. Dragonlance isn't as interesting a setting, IMO, and neither is Dark Sun. Dark Sun is the Forgotten Realms like a thousand years after some unholy magical catastrophe.

I don't dislike Rokugan (actually, I rather like Rokugan as a setting), but I don't think it words as a D&D setting.

You could also do a mystic China setting if you got creative enough with the monsters. (I'm in the middle of Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars right now)

Discworld would be another fun setting for a D&D game.

Oreet wrote:Our weekly RPG group cycles between Eclipse Phase (great hard sci-fi setting) and the new Firefly (space western!). They are both loads of fun in the Sci-Fi genre of RPGs. And if you have someone that just needs to do magicy stuff, Shadowrun might be a good one to try out.

But now we're really getting off topic.

I had the chance to play two Eclipse Phase games. Great setting. I'm a huge fan of Culture books by Ian Banks.
Firefly is certainly a cool setting... but I don't like the Cortex System.
Shadow Run : Can't play. Elves with HMGs is ridiculous (in my mind). Plus I don't want to throw book loads of d6.

Off topic? As long a we talk RPGs its fine.

Section9 wrote:As far as the classic D&D settings go, Forgotten Realms is easy to handle, and kinda the default. Dragonlance isn't as interesting a setting, IMO, and neither is Dark Sun. Dark Sun is the Forgotten Realms like a thousand years after some unholy magical catastrophe.

I don't dislike Rokugan (actually, I rather like Rokugan as a setting), but I don't think it words as a D&D setting.

You could also do a mystic China setting if you got creative enough with the monsters. (I'm in the middle of Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars right now)

Discworld would be another fun setting for a D&D game.

Dragon Lance is great to read but as a setting its too limited.

Its true that Rokugan isn't D&D. L5R is way better.

Mystic China sounds interesting! Adding that idea to my Campaign notebook.

Personally I've never really used a published setting; my friends and I prefered our own homebrew campaign settings really, especially back in our High School days when we had so much free time to cook them up. We tried a few published adventures and such and just couldn't get a feel for the tone or pacing of official stuff, so we quickly abandoned those in favor of our own worlds and characters.

System wise 5ed seems like a breath of fresh air, bringing back nearly everything I liked about ADND and dropping everything I disliked about 3.5+/Pathfinder.

MARC C wrote:

Section9 wrote:As far as the classic D&D settings go, Forgotten Realms is easy to handle, and kinda the default. Dragonlance isn't as interesting a setting, IMO, and neither is Dark Sun. Dark Sun is the Forgotten Realms like a thousand years after some unholy magical catastrophe.
I don't dislike Rokugan (actually, I rather like Rokugan as a setting), but I don't think it words as a D&D setting.
You could also do a mystic China setting if you got creative enough with the monsters. (I'm in the middle of Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars right now)
Discworld would be another fun setting for a D&D game.

Dragon Lance is great to read but as a setting its too limited.
Its true that Rokugan isn't D&D. L5R is way better.
Mystic China sounds interesting! Adding that idea to my Campaign notebook.

Lo5R is awesome - just finishing the second city box set campaign (4th edition) with my regular crew. When WotC and AEG moved Rokugan during the 2nd Edition (Lo5R) and 3.0 (D&D) I was surpised that they threw all the previous Oriental Adventures - which was pretty generic but it fit really well as the nations to the east in Forgotten Realms. I was really happy with the merger ended and Lo5R went back to being a solo setting. I wish AEG would update a new edition for the Burning Sands game. It was a middle eastern setting that geographicaly neighboured Rokugan.

Discworld would be brilliant - plenty of place for PC's to make a mark even in such a developed setting.

Hero of Man wrote:Personally I've never really used a published setting; my friends and I prefered our own homebrew campaign settings really, especially back in our High School days when we had so much free time to cook them up. We tried a few published adventures and such and just couldn't get a feel for the tone or pacing of official stuff, so we quickly abandoned those in favor of our own worlds and characters.

System wise 5ed seems like a breath of fresh air, bringing back nearly everything I liked about ADND and dropping everything I disliked about 3.5+/Pathfinder.

In our group I was the doing all the world building. I would buy gazetteers, Grayhawk and FR books then home-brew my stuff from there. I had a Black Company (Glen Cook) inspired game running for 9 years (2E).

When 4E was announced, again I created a setting, but the edition and the fact that the group was never stable cured me of home brewing. The energy I spent was wasted. With 5E I ran the starter set adventure which I linked to the Tyranny of Dragons. The new gaming group is stable. Less work on all fronts!

I only read one Disc World book. I did enjoy it. Is there a rpg or setting book somewhere?

Discworld had two books (that I've seen) for the GURPS ruleset.

Which is a nifty ruleset if you ask me, though requires a GM worth his salt I guess. There are too many options to be used and you have to think well on which ones you want, and which ones not. GURPS can be ran bare-bones (3 basic statistics plus Hit points) or can be ran with almost microscopic details being managed by the ruleset. Oh, or anywhere in-between.
Nope, haven't tried it.

Errhile wrote:Discworld had two books (that I've seen) for the GURPS ruleset.

Which is a nifty ruleset if you ask me, though requires a GM worth his salt I guess. There are too many options to be used and you have to think well on which ones you want, and which ones not. GURPS can be ran bare-bones (3 basic statistics plus Hit points) or can be ran with almost microscopic details being managed by the ruleset. Oh, or anywhere in-between.
Nope, haven't tried it.

Sad!
Bought the GURPS books 5 years ago. Tried to get into the game but since no one had experience it took 3 hours to create one character. Mind you the player got exactly what he wanted. In the end, I just couldn't muster the energy to do the 4 other characters (3x4 - 12 hours..!). We never played and I sold my books.

Well, you jumped into deep water from the very beginning, I guess... and these rules are really detailed (still, I've read the F.A.T.A.L. or whatewer was that crap called... and GURPS is nowhere near that bad).

You could still take the sourcebooks and use them for something really simple, like BESM / TriStat. Should convert neatly, I guess - and TriStat seemed to be very playable ruleset. Not terribly realistic or detailed (unless you wanted to go pretty deep into advantages and disadvantages), but good enough to provide rules-light mechanics for an experienced GM and players who know their craft

MARC C wrote:Mystic China sounds interesting! Adding that idea to my Campaign notebook.

There's an RPG called Qin: the Warring States that has a decent amount of background and setting info available. All in PDF, and you only need two d10s to play (one black and one white, they need to be two different colors).

Awesome setting, and totally set up for games more in the feel of Beijing Opera or Hong Kong action movies. Cinematic moves, criticals happen very often (1/10, with 1/100 being a crit fumble).

Think like a Storyteller, and not like a Dungeonmaster.

Section9 wrote:

MARC C wrote:Mystic China sounds interesting! Adding that idea to my Campaign notebook.

There's an RPG called Qin: the Warring States that has a decent amount of background and setting info available. All in PDF, and you only need two d10s to play (one black and one white, they need to be two different colors).

Awesome setting, and totally set up for games more in the feel of Beijing Opera or Hong Kong action movies. Cinematic moves, criticals happen very often (1/10, with 1/100 being a crit fumble).

Think like a Storyteller, and not like a Dungeonmaster.

Yep! some else on another forum also recommend this title. The local store has a hardcopy.

Have you played it?

Errhile wrote:Well, you jumped into deep water from the very beginning, I guess... and these rules are really detailed (still, I've read the F.A.T.A.L. or whatewer was that crap called... and GURPS is nowhere near that bad).

You could still take the sourcebooks and use them for something really simple, like BESM / TriStat. Should convert neatly, I guess - and TriStat seemed to be very playable ruleset. Not terribly realistic or detailed (unless you wanted to go pretty deep into advantages and disadvantages), but good enough to provide rules-light mechanics for an experienced GM and players who know their craft

I guess at a younger age I could have gotten into GURPS had the occasion presented itself. At the time (late 80s) we were into Squad Leader and other Avalon Hill games so heavy ruleset were not an issue. But since my fall out with D&D3.5/4E I'm looking for back to basic RPGs. 5E has captured that and its the reason I'm playing D&D again. That is also why I'm playing Numenera which is sci-fantasy with a twist.

I keep complexity for miniature gaming these days.

MARC C wrote:Yep! some else on another forum also recommend [Qin]. The local store has a hardcopy.

Have you played it?

Yes, I've played a couple short sessions. One was a solo one-off with a friend of mine, using the scenario in the back of the core book. The other game was one I called "Heian Qin" (Qin mechanics set in Japan a thousand years ago), and it lasted ~10 sessions or so because we were running short campaigns and trading Storytelling duties.

Building a character is pretty quick if you have one book for each player, but I have some stuff I put together for my attempt at GMing the game I am willing to share if you don't have one book for each player. I didn't use the Qin combat mechanic for Heian Qin, though. I used the system from Exalted 2e (shared with Scion), instead.

If you carefully read through the combat rules and run a few small combats to get things figured out, I'm sure the Qin combat is perfectly playable, I just wasn't quite solid on it when I was running my game and I knew the Exalted 2e combat mechanics. Higher-level martial arts abilities get multiple attack opportunities per round in Qin, so I had to do some adjustments to the martial arts skills/feats to match up with the Exalted 'tick' system. But that is in a separate file from my character creation file. You will need to doublecheck the amount of starting XP you get, though. I started my guys out moderately competent instead of just starting their adventuring. I also renamed the combat skills to their Japanese equivalents in my character creation file, but that should be pretty quick to fix.

One really cool thing about Qin is that you have two different kinds of "XP": One you get to spend to learn new skills or raise stats, the other is your renown. And if you don't keep doing great things, you will actually LOSE renown over time as people get tired of hearing about your exploits and other people do great things to provide grist for the rumor mill.

How is Numenera? I see that Reaper has some minis for it.

5e D&D is proving to be quite fun for my little group. Even the Mrs.s have joined in, which makes for some interesting dynamics. But fun. Plus, for once, I am not the DM. 5e strikes me as what 2e should have been.

I also gave Numenera a quick glance. Loved the setting but the rules didn't really catch my attention.
Would you recommend it for somebody who is more into the storytelling part of RPG?

red harvest wrote:How is Numenera? I see that Reaper has some minis for it.

5e D&D is proving to be quite fun for my little group. Even the Mrs.s have joined in, which makes for some interesting dynamics. But fun. Plus, for once, I am not the DM. 5e strikes me as what 2e should have been.

Numenera is probably the easiest and best implementation of the d20 :
- The Sci-Fantasy setting is super cool. Because of the Nine World idea players can encounter artefacts from all genre or SF and Fantasy.

- Players can spend ability ressources to lower the difficulty of an attack. Its a limited ressource so players have to be careful on hw they spend it.

- When the GM pulls a dirty trick on the players (called intrusions) he gives away one token that can be spent later by the players in a helpful way.

- No minis are necessary but you can use them if you want for placement. Combat ranges are expressed in three zones. Within Reach, one move away and far. Ranges beyond that have a specific number.

- The combat system is fast pace with fixed damage (2,3, 4, etc) for weapons - reduced by armor type.

- The BEST feature : GM never rolls any dice. When a monster attacks its the player that does a defence roll.

- When I finish a game I'm always amazed at how the player do the hard work. I only have to tell the story. The system is built for that.

Honestly, I haven't played this game enough. (5 games). But I'm planning on starting a regular campaign in May once our D&D 5E campaign is over.

Section9 wrote:

MARC C wrote:Yep! some else on another forum also recommend [Qin]. The local store has a hardcopy.

Have you played it?

Yes, I've played a couple short sessions...

Thank for the recommendation. I went to the LGS and looked at the book. I bought it. Saved a bit because it was on sale (slightly damaged). Started reading it yesterday. Enjoying it immensely!