Old settings ya miss (D&D)

[BobVosh]

Basically the name: Old settings/discontinued sections of existing settings that you miss.

Mine are Maztica and Dark sun.

I didn't get to play Maztica, but from what I read (trying to update for 3.x) I really liked the flavor. Also it is nice being in a setting that is very different from standard D&D

Dark Sun was a lot of fun. Some things were kinda stupid, but I loved what they did with halflings. The original race, cannibalistic, jungle midgets (not on raptors, thank you). Muls were neat, and domains/divine magic had a nice twist.

[Zincorium]

Planescape. At the very least, Planescape as a dedicated setting rather than a theoretical add-on to regular D&D. In addition to Tony DiTerlizzi's awesome artwork, the sheer variety of the setting was mind-boggling. Ah well, it can still be run in 3.x with a sufficiently mule-headed DM.

[Tempest Fennac]

What was Maztica like? (I know a bit about Eberron and Dark Sun, but I don't know much about other settings due to obly starting playing last January while typically using homebrew settings in my games.)

[BlueWizard]

Anything Gygax wrote... I still use his stuff as source material sometimes.

[Comet]

Planescape, Spelljammer and Dark Sun. Those three are the best things to ever come out of Dungeons & Dragons.

[charl]

Planescape and Ravenloft. Planescape is just amazing, and the setting so different. It's awesome. And Ravenloft really captured its intended feeling.

EDIT: Someone mentioned Spelljammer. That setting was also pretty cool.

[Thane of Fife]

What was Maztica like? (I know a bit about Eberron and Dark Sun, but I don't know much about other settings due to obly starting playing last January while typically using homebrew settings in my games.)

Check out Maztica here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads). Wizards has it as a free download, as well as some adventures and other cool stuff.

It's basically Mesoamerican D&D.

Settings I miss? Well, I play 2e, so I don't have that problem much. Red Steel/The Savage Coast and Mystara as a whole both really intrigue me, though I don't know that much about the latter (the former is, again, available from Wizards, and I've got some of the books). I also like the Lankhmar book I have.

[Starscream]

I'm with all the people who said Planescape and Spelljammer. Those were pretty awesome.

[BlueWizard]

I'll hop on the Spelljammer bus as well.

Planescape for me never left.

[Dixieboy]

Spelljammer

And forgotten realms that made sense :smallmad:

[Kurald Galain]

Definitely Spelljammer. It's probably the most original setting D&D has to offer, and it's fun.

I've never cared much for Dark Sun (too munchkin, or perhaps that was just the players around here) nor for Planescape (although I fully admit that Torment is beyond awesome).

[Rad]

I still have a soft spot for Mystara since it is what I first gamed into.
Thinking back of it... it wasn't that great: there were heavy inconsistencies and most nations seemed to be on a completely different setting (due to every nation being published separately by different authors) but there was the right place for virtually anything. A few things would be a bit hard to translate into 3.5 D&D though.
After all my very nickname comes from there... :smallbiggrin:

And the shadow elves were SO much better that these "drow" you hear about.

[bosssmiley]

Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Birthright, Al-Qadim, Hollow World.

The 2E period really was a golden age of bizarre alternate settings, wasn't it? :smallsmile:

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks, Thane (sadly, I can't open the file without buying some other bit of software :smallfrown:).

[RelentlessImp]

Planescape and Dragonlance.

[Thane of Fife]

Thanks, Thane (sadly, I can't open the file without buying some other bit of software :smallfrown:).

Is it because it's a zipped file?

You can try the open source 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/).

[Eldariel]

Gonna echo the general consensus: Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape.

[Satyr]

Dark Sun is a great, if somewhat misanthropic setting. Which is probably the reason why I liked it.
Midnight was also a great setting, probably also because it was a third party setting. And also quite grim. Which is also a reason to like it, for me. I don't like "nice".

[Talya]

Maztica, along with Zakhara and Kara-tur, being continents on Abeir-Toril, are technically part of Forgotten Realms, so would be fairly easy to update. You just need the maps and fluff.

[togapika]

Al Quadim... nuff said

[LibraryOgre]

Birthright and Dark Sun.

Birthright was wonderfully varied, allowing low-level games, strategic play as regents, and had a great, low-magic feel that didn't actually impact the level of magic in the game world that much (any wizard player who wanted to could be a full wizard just by declaring himself blooded at character creation... but the Magician class and the changes to bards made it so that NPCs didn't have to be fully competent wizards). Want to work for a Guild (not even a thieves' guild... a legitimate guild)? We can do that. Want to play a feckless young noble? The rules are set up to allow it. Want to be a minor lord, who takes his entire household guard with him on adventures? That'll hit your XP, but it works.

Humans had a variety of races and cultures, which were actually hard-coded into stats. These races had differing technological levels. Elves and dwarves felt DIFFERENT (elves cannot be priests... but they also do not sleep and do not age), and halflings were more than the Tolkienish knock-offs that they had so long been... while still seeming to be the Tolkienish knock-offs that everyone knew.

Dark Sun went opposite. You were dirt. At 3rd level, you had no money, all of the cities are run by insane, immortal, genocidal, psychopaths whose priests can throw you into prison or enslave you on a whim. Finding a metal sword was a big deal, almost as big as your first magic sword. Some of the weapons are downright weird, and all of the races are neurotic twins of their stereotypes. Dwarves don't just like to work... they HAVE to work, or they'll turn into undead when they die. Halflings aren't just xenophobic, rustic, homebodies... they're cannibalistic primitives who don't consider others to be human. On the other hand, there were rules for becoming immortal, or gaining massive armies.

[Swooper]

Dark Sun and Al-Qadim. Although I've never played in non-homebrew settings anyway and probably never will (except maybe in a PbP).

[Darth Stabber]

+1 vote spelljammer. D&D + Star Trek = p0rn 4 nerds.

[bobspldbckwrds]

im glad that im not the first one to mention birthright. hell, one of the most successful games that i am playing in right now is birthright.

[Eldan]

Well, since I only ever DM Planescape and my own setting Etherworlds, that, of course. I never played Planescape, but damn, I like it.

[Eldariel]

D&D + Star Trek = p0rn 4 nerds.

Pardon my ignorance, but I always lived under the understanding that p0rn is p0rn for nerds?

[Samb]

Planescape is alive and well at planewalker.com. They have 'canon' stuff for after fraction wars, conversions all that good stuff. It is a bit packing without the artwork though.

Arthas.com doesn't seem quite as organized or updated as PW.com but still worth a look.

Many people say that all the different campigns killed TSR's brand and they might be correct, but I loved all the creativity at the time. It felt like TSR was really catering to all of us and judging by everyones reactions I'd say they succeeded.

[Hzurr]

And forgotten realms that made sense :smallmad:

Forgotten Realms never made sense. Missing the 3.5E Forgotten Realms over the 4E version I understand; but don't try and pretend that it made sense (it was always silly and ridiculous, people were just used to it and had forgotten)

[Thane of Fife]

Forgotten Realms never made sense. Missing the 3.5E Forgotten Realms over the 4E version I understand; but don't try and pretend that it made sense (it was always silly and ridiculous, people were just used to it and had forgotten)

I don't think that I can agree - I've certainly never found any gaping flaws in my old Forgotten Realms books.


But this is kind of depressing - where's all the Red Steel love?

[Fjolnir]

I like red steel, I got it as a gift and it was my gateway into d&d...

[LibraryOgre]

Forgotten Realms never made sense. Missing the 3.5E Forgotten Realms over the 4E version I understand; but don't try and pretend that it made sense (it was always silly and ridiculous, people were just used to it and had forgotten)

I disagree. It could be silly, but it worked pretty well for us for years. I'd say that much of what made FR incomprehensible was actually the same changes that overpowered wizards in 3e.

[Caen'ir]

I fell in love with Planescape, but thanks to Planewalker, it's not old yet for me. :smallsmile: I like Dragonlance a lot, too. I don't know much about other settings, since I started DnD less than 6 years ago. I've heard a lot of good things about Spelljammer, though.

[Ascension]

I concur with the "I would say Planescape, except I'm still using it anyway" crowd. In fact, I was introduced to Planescape in 3.5.

2E definitely wins the best edition in terms of campaign settings award.

[BlueWizard]

I still have a soft spot for Mystara since it is what I first gamed into.
Thinking back of it... it wasn't that great: there were heavy inconsistencies and most nations seemed to be on a completely different setting (due to every nation being published separately by different authors) but there was the right place for virtually anything. A few things would be a bit hard to translate into 3.5 D&D though.
After all my very nickname comes from there... :smallbiggrin:

And the shadow elves were SO much better that these "drow" you hear about.

I once quested for Rad.

[RebelRogue]

+1 on Mystara. It was the first setting I played in D&D and as some people have noted, it might not have been that great or consistent, but I have fond memories of it:smallsmile:

[BlueWizard]

And its not too hard to convert. I've done it. The Glantri wizards were fun to update.

[RebelRogue]

And its not too hard to convert. I've done it. The Glantri wizards were fun to update.
Oh yes, they were quite interesting. Did you model those factions with their circles (wasn't that the term?) with prestige classes or how did you go about it? Some of them sound potentially overpowered (you actually become the Great, immortal Dragon, ruler of all dragonkind! WTFBBQ??!?!)

[Thurbane]

Greyhawk.

To me, one of the great injustices of the universe is the lack of support Greyhawk has gotten in recent editions. If I had a spare Wish, I'd have given all the support and hype that Eberron got in 3.X to greyhawk.

:smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown:

[Roland St. Jude]

I really enjoyed Spelljammer, Planescape, and Ravenloft. We played a ton of games in those settings and usually had a blast. I liked reading about Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and FR but the games we played in those worlds weren't as good, probably because we weren't as immersed in the history of those worlds as we should have been; I enjoyed reading the novels though, and we played in in more Greyhawk-ish custom settings than anything else. My friends liked Dark Sun and Birthright quite a bit, but we didn't play those too much for some reason.

The Spelljammer fans did a nice job updating the setting to 3.x but I never got into a game to try it out.

The thing I most keenly miss is having the time to play in all of these settings. :smallsigh:

[Fixer]

In the last 6 years I have not gotten to play anything but homebrew worlds. :(

However, over the years I have I enjoyed the following for the following reasons:
Spelljammer
This is D&D meets Star Trek. Explore strange worlds, meet new races, and avoid getting eaten by giant space monsters. What is there not to like? I really disliked the ship-to-ship combat, though. Bogged things down.
Planescape
The sheer variety of places to go in Planescape makes it my second favorite place to be. You can go to a demon's court one day, then walk over and eat vegetables from a god's garden.
Birthright
I really enjoyed the whole strategy side of this world. I only got to play this for three games over the course of two months but I really liked the flavor of the world.
Al-Quadim
Such a cool concept, too bad they never took it anywhere. I still have many of the maps for it.
Ravenloft
Gothic Horror points-of-light concept. Really requires a GM who can play up the whole horror aspect, but one of my longest campaigns was in it and I enjoyed playing.
Dark Sun
Another points-of-light concept, but with more of a survivalist bent. Like a pre-Sandstorm game book. I did enjoy the dragons. They were cool dragons.

[Coplantor]

Dark sun was not a points-of-light setting. It was madness! Stay too long in a city and you'll get killed by mad wizards, enslaved by power driven templars, scammed by ruthless elven merchants or, sometimes, have a nice and quiet evening in a tabern... just to find that someone stole your ceramic pieces.

Now, if you choose to travel a lot then you had too deal with bloodthirsty raiders, packs of thri kreen hunters, canibalistic halflings, undead hordes, hostile weather conditions, an overpowered psychic/wizard dragon... heck, you had to be carefull whenever you visited an oasis, step on one little patch of grass and a druid might kill you.

All that said... I loved it. Besides, if you considered the power that a wizard has... it was the only setting that made sense.

The only problem? I never played nor mastered even one single adventure, I had the books (well, a friend had the books, I just read them). Mainly because one of the players just hates psionic characters, wnd when you have a group of three players, one player hating the setting is more than enough.

But the day will come, when I'll play a Dark Sun campaign, I rather play a 2nd edition one than the 3.5 update.

[Samb]

All that said... I loved it. Besides, if you considered the power that a wizard has... it was the only setting that made sense.

The only problem? I never played nor mastered even one single adventure, I had the books (well, a friend had the books, I just read them). Mainly because one of the players just hates psionic characters, wnd when you have a group of three players, one player hating the setting is more than enough.


Why even play Dark Sun if you hate psionics? It is such a key part of Athas that to not have it would make the whole "evolve or die" aspect moot. I am not a psi Nazi or anything, but Dark Sun without psionics is just dumb. Hell, I got my first taste of psionics from Athas and have loved it since.

[Coplantor]

Why even play Dark Sun if you hate psionics? It is such a key part of Athas that to not have it would make the whole "evolve or die" aspect moot. I am not a psi Nazi or anything, but Dark Sun without psionics is just dumb. Hell, I got my first taste of psionics from Athas and have loved it since.

That's pretty much my point, we never played dark sun because one of the players hates psionics, the other two guys would've been easy to persuade though. Meh, I'll force them some day.

[Hexprak]

I miss Birthright Mystara and Ravenloft. And I wish I had tried planescape heard so many good things and never found a game with it.

Shadow Elves were way better then drow and Glantri and the Brotherhood of Radiance were awesome.

Birthright was really fun I played and DM'd the setting. And despite the amount of work rolling reagents and making new realms for everyone was it really was my favorite and I even tried to play it in 3.x as well. Doing it as a large scale strategy game with various intrigue filled adventures every other turn was a fun diversion from normal dnd and just kept people's interest longer then most games I have been part of.

Ravenloft just had really great flavor to it.

[Coplantor]

Anyone has a link to a page with a 3.x update of birthright or planescape? hearing all this good things about this settings makes me want to try them out.

[Dacia Brabant]

I concur with everyone who's said Spelljammer and Planescape, mostly for how many options it gave you. There were some things about them that I don't care for (ship-to-ship combat generally wasn't fun especially for the helmsman, and some of the factions in Sigil are beyond stupid), but you could pretty much include whatever you wanted in them without it being ridiculous since by playing you've already bought into their concepts of Space or the Outer Planes.

I also miss the Forgotten Realms of about 20 years ago. 4e went way way way too far with correcting 3.X's excesses but there definitely were excesses in it, most of which I attribute to Mystra and/or the magic system and weren't really present in older versions.

[Waspinator]

Since Ravenloft was mentioned:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=701&it=1
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2480&it=1

[ken-do-nim]

Session #2 of my Mystara campaign is coming up this Saturday. Naturally we are starting in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. When I was reading Gaz1 the plot ideas kept jumping off the page at me!

[bosssmiley]

Anyone has a link to a page with a 3.x update of birthright or planescape? hearing all this good things about this settings makes me want to try them out.

Birthright - birthright.net (http://www.birthright.net/)
Planescape - planewalker.com (http://www.planewalker.com/)
Dark Sun - athas.org (http://www.athas.org/)
Spelljammer - spelljammer.org (http://www.http://www.spelljammer.org/)
Mystara & Hollow World - pandius.com (http://www.pandius.com/)

[Creeps]

Planescape was perfect. Just...perfect. "Ya'll wanna tool around in Toril today? Maybe Krynn? If you're reaaaaally unlucky, we might just venture into Athas or maybe you'll be swept off by some mist into this really cheery demiplane I know.."

I've tried, but I've never really cared for the more pedestrian settings. I keep trying to make FR work for me, but...eh.