Tell Me Your Favorite D&D Setting

What's everyone's favorite D&D setting and why? As a follow-up, what is a lesser-utilized setting that you really like?

I always prefer homebrewed worlds of the DM's creation whenever possible. I like it when the PCs are small town folk who don't really know what is outside their hometown and they get to discover the world at the same time that the players do.

But that wasn't really your question. If we're going with published settings I would have to go with Greyhawk. Probably because it feels like a randomly cobbled together homebrew world.

I think Dark Sun is great as a lesser used setting. It is different enough to be interesting, but similar enough to still feel like D&D. I think it works best for one-shots or short campaigns though. I wouldn't want to play it for years on end.

Like Griff says, I lean almost exclusively on entirely homebrewed settings.

For published D&D settings, I've enjoyed Planescape, Spelljammer, and the oft maligned Forgotten Realms.

Planescape contains most of what I want: doorways to new worlds, be those established ones or unique, and a rich central location with tons of character.

Spelljammer has got a Baron Munchausen like travel and vehicle combat thing, more world hopping, and some interesting "stellar" politics.

Forgotten Realms is just so great, so detailed and yet full of little pockets for your adventures. I've lost track of the meta-lore so I won't even tell to use "current" FR anymore, but even last year I started a new IRL campaign and started it on the Sword Coast before sending the party to a Domain of Dread.

Of my favorite published D&D setting is properly:

Eberron: This is just a well-crafted setting, where elves can be evil, orcs good, and magic have improved the way of life. If we take forgotten realms and advance the time some hundred years, one would expect the advancement of magic to look like Eberron.
I like the post-war setting and all the conflicts between the houses, governments, faiths, and whatnot. It is a very story-rich setting for pulp action adventures.

Planescape: I got to know the setting from the AD&D planeswalkers handbook and the PC game Planescape Torment. It has the potential to be a really philosophical game, where each player explore the multivers and their role in it. Helped very much by the many factions

Forgotten realms: Its a well-documented setting, and very plug-and-play

Spelljammer: I have read abit about it, and see some good youtubes about the setting, and it intrigues me a lot. But I haven't played it yet

Eberron: Such a cool setting that fits all that's great about D&D in a believable way. Plus it's really cool that the NPCs aren't extremely high level, as it leaves room for you to be there hero.

Ravenloft: Awesome horror elements and a really cool villain.

Mystara: The setting for the BECMI rule set was amazing. It has so much lore and information in the many gazetteers that they published. Plus the Hollow World that exists on the inside of the planet is really awesome. All of the dead civilizations end up there, preserved by the gods, so you'll find bronze age peoples, prehistoric societies, etc in there.

A few that I want to get to know better are Planescape, Spelljammer, and Birthright, all of which are really cool and unique takes on traditional D&D.

Mystara and Forgotten Realms are my favorites.

Ravenloft is my favorite. Was such a shock the first time I had a characters/group transported there, having no clue what it was, by the Mists. Followed by themed, candle-lit, Halloween sessions every year. So many good memories. I've visited it as a player and/or DM at least once, in every edition since the AD&D days, including Pathfinder (and one of my favorite Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds). Simple and narrow as a setting, but deep and rich lore.

I'd have to second Dark Sun as my fav lesser used. Love psionics. Some really interesting takes on the standard fantasy faire (cannibalistic halfling's!? yes please). The old DOS/floppy computer game was awesome... Yea.

No one ever mentioned Dragonlance it seems.

Birthright: A rare-magic, political AD&D 2e setting where PCs were assumed to be kings, nobles, guildmasters, high priests and court wizards. It had a realm building and warfare system that honestly we never really used, but a wonderful, detailed, rich setting and history of exploding gods, warped monster-kings and where the divine right of kings was a very real thing. Had great takes on the standard races (elves really leaned in to the immortal, alien, haughty, xenophobic thing, with orders of knights dedicated to purging humanity and having no gods or religion in a world where those things manifestly existed; halflings could step sideways into the Shadow World, a place that had once been a faerie wonderland but became corrupted by cold and death into an undead mockery of the real world, something that I think influenced the Feywild and Shadowfell in later editions). It predated the publication of the first book of ASOIAF by a few months, I believe, but you wouldn't be far off if you thought of it as Game of Thrones in D&D.

Midnight: 3/3.5e setting published by FFG. Usually summed up as 'what if Lord of the Rings, but Sauron won?' Takes places a hundred years after the fall of the human kingdoms to the armies of orcs, dark priesthood and traitor armies of Izrador, the sole god in a world cut off from the heavens by his fall to earth. Humans, the gnomish river-folk and the wolf-riding halfling nomads are occupied subjects or slaves, their blood feeding the altars that drain arcane magic from the world. The elven nations and dwarven holds are on the backfoot, losing ground every day. Literacy, free members of non-human races, weapons and magic are outlawed, with priests leading shapeshifting magic-sniffing demons to hunt down magical items and spellcasters. It's a grim, dark fantasy setting of resistance and rebellion, where the PCs have access to Heroic Paths representing strange ancestries or unique gifts to make up for the rarity and danger of conventional magic. Excellent background and cultural details, great tone.

Odyssey: Jakandor: An AD&D 2e setting presented as two opposing, PC focused books and a GM book to mediate the difference. Best summed up as barbarians vs. necromancers on a post apocalyptic sword and sorcery island. Two groups of humans oppose each other: the Egyptian-Aztec flavoured arcanists, the Charonti, for whom necromancy and ancestor worship are a part of everyday life; and the Celtic-Native American Knorr, honourable warriors who spurn magic as corrupt cowardice and regard necromancy as grave defiling. Following a magic-vectored plague that crashed an empire they find themselves on the ruin-dotted island of Jakandor and at each other's throats. Full of awesome stuff like Charonti airships made from whale skeletons filled with magical float-bladders and Knorr totems, which are essentially giant wood, stone or wicker golems tribes used to settle their differences in giant magical mecha rumbles. I'd love to play it in 5e, but so much of it involves the cultural details and tone of the rival factions that it'd be hard to explain it concisely for the players.

Dark Sun

I'm not a huge D&D guys. I mostly played in the settings my friends had purchased: Darksun, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms. The one setting which does interest me though is the one from Kobold Press. Midgard? Or Zobeck maybe? Forgot the exact name. An underground ghoul empire which has conquered most of the Underdark and regularly use Drows, Duergars, and Derros as cattle? A vampire nation which has recently conquered one of its neighbours? A pact signed by the human nations with the dark feys, allowing people to travel using "Fey Roads" allowing to travel faster through the fey's own dimension... All those things sounds fascinating to me.

I suspect not many people will answer this way, but I find Theros SUPER intriguing. I've always loved Greek myth, and playing half-sandbox half-character/plot driven game in Theros sounds great. I really enjoyed reading through the recent book and was disappointed it didn't get more traction.

I doubt many will answer that way because it's so new and doesn't have the nostalgia and mystique about it as the other settings mentioned. But I definitely agree, it's probably my favorite setting book to come out of 5e!

I missed out on Theros when it was the current set for M:tG, wasn't playing at the time so I didn't buy any cards. So I wouldn't have thought to name it my favorite, but really any of the M:tG worlds would be fun to play in. Ravnica is my absolute top though.

I agree, I was really hyped about Theros when I first got the book! I like how the book helps players create characters that belong in the setting without getting them to read the lore. For example, they give guidance on how to pick Traits, Ideals, Flaws, and Bonds that fit with ancient Greece themes. Characters get supernatural gifts that are loaded with setting flavour. The piety mechanic gets them acting in accordance with the setting's religions.

Building these ideas into the character mechanics seems much more likely to get a game with the unique Theros feeling than handing them a bunch of lore to read.

reposting from discord:

Eberron is my favorite kitchen-sink setting. Everything fits together so well, and the kind of games it encourages (pulp action adventure) fit my style pretty well.

Ptolus gets my vote for favorite niche setting. It's a whole world of d&d in one city and it really blows my mind how they fit so much action and intrigue. A Monte Cook masterpiece.

Dark Sun gets an honorable mention here. It oozes with drama and excitement. Very hard to have a boring adventure in Dark Sun.

There aren't many settings I don't like! On my bucket list of official settings is Nentir Vale. Never got to play there but the points of light concept sounds tailor made for creating awesome stories.

I guess my perspective changes depending on running vs. playing. I love playing in Greyhawk or FR but I like running games in less broad settings. I'm prone falling down setting rabbit holes and those long-standing settings are near-bottomless. That's great as a player, but daunting as a DM. That's just my feeling about it, I can see how that depth of lore might energize and excite a DM.

While I haven't put my DM shoes on in PbP yet, I'm inclined to agree. When thinking about running a game at a table, I prefer to have them in a smaller locale like a city or a small region. The idea of an entire continent is unpleasantly daunting because players could end up ANYWHERE. I feel like a smaller area might force players to be a little more strategically minded because they can't just disappear to another nation if this one isn't working out anymore, or if it doesn't have the tools they need to overcome an obstacle.

I mean, I don't want to derail this thread, but you really shouldn't look at GMing like that. Trying to play like that is a number 1 reason how and why GMs burn out. Uncooperative/uncollaborative players.

If your players aren't going to buy into the story you're planning, then no reasonable degree of geographic restriction is going to make things easier.

What you're envisioning here is a problem that should be nipped in the bud during a Session Zero.

GMing is not about letting things go wherever the Players want them to go, whenever they want them to go there.

It should be a collaborative storytelling effort.

The Players need to find a reason for their character to be interested in the other characters and the game premise as it is presented, and they need to work with what you give them and work to make that an awesome story. On the other side of that coin, as GM, you need to leave the solution to any given quest open ended, you need to note what they are enjoying and what they are not, and plan for the future to be sure to keep those elements going, you need to incorporate character Bonds or other interests and goals into the plot.

But, as GM, you are not required to be ready for anything at any time, anywhere in the game world. It's not reasonable. It's a clear indication the players are not trying to collaborate, which is a violation of the most basic principles of rpgs...

Thank you for coming to my TED talk 😖

Thank you. I totally agree

I agree as well.

truer words have never been spoken adam

It is if everyone is having fun :>

Totally agree.

Just not what I, or... literally anyone I've ever gamed with, wanted from a D&D experience.

I also might add that it seems like that's not what skeptical_stun, whom I was responding to, wants either, because if they did they wouldn't stress about players abandoning the story or not being able to be prepared for anything that the players want to do.

Let's bring the discussion back to the topic at hand.

I'd like to give a shoutout to the Wildemount setting. I don't watch Critical Role so I don't know how that setting plays out in Matt Mercer's game, but the book is a great example of how I think a setting book should be written. The locations are evocative and the central conflict of the setting is compelling and I can see how stories will spiral into it. But most of all, I love all the adventure hooks!

Every described place has adventure hooks, so there are a hundred or more (didn't do an exact count). They are given a rating for tier 1-4 parties, and 2-3 paragraphs of juicy adventure bait. There is a lot of originality in these hooks, and although they are customized to the setting, Wildemount is close enough to other kitchen sink settings that I can imagine any DM filing off the serial numbers and sticking these adventure hooks in any number of D&D settings.

When you read through, the focus on adventure hooks really makes you see the adventuring potential of the setting. Your mind comes alive with images of what your game will be like when you are playing in this setting.

I also like what I have read from the Wildemount setting, but the setting is still so new (and for my unplayed), that I would not call it favorite

That's true, I wouldn't call it a favorite setting. I guess I was thinking about what makes a setting appealing for me.

Okay, I wrote a whole lot of text that basically says "I like a setting that supports sandbox play by putting adventure hooks front-and-center and have core tensions that only the player characters can resolve." Eberron, Ptolus and Darksun all fit that bill (my stated favorites).

I've left these words here in case you want to watch me spiral into this realization.

Netheril is awesome. Currently using it's lore heavily in my current, IRL 5E campaign.

Next stop for the PCs, leaving from Silverymoon, is the ruins of Karse in fact!

Len, you seemed pretty knowledgeable about Theros. Ones of the things that interested me most admit that setting was that it sounded like it can with some new Big Bad/boss battle mechanics...

Is that an accurate characterization, and if so, how are they/what do they bring?

I really like the Ravenloft and Dark Sun settings, but if I were to run them I'd adapt them to a more modern system like Genesys.

Big winner for me, by far, is Dark Sun !!!

But I have also played and loved Ravenloft, Birthright, Red Steel, Forgotten Realms, Al-Quadim, Eberron, Planescape and Spelljammer.

I am surprised no one has mentioned Dragonlance.

I love Dragonlance as a world but I won’t play it until I finish the books.

There's like 200. And Weiss and Hickman have been recently contracted to write more.

(Simply my opinion...) Dragonlance is a marvelous setting... for novels... It's sadly one the rare settings I have not like playing in... (But that may also be due to the Dm at the time...)

It was kinda overhyped. They only show 3 "mythic" monsters and don't offer any guidelines or rules on how to make your own. Mind you, it's pretty typical stuff straight out of video games, so it's not hard to reverse engineer it. For example, when you reduce a mythic creature to 0 hp they recharge to full and gain new abilities, but you reveal a weakness that lets you defeat them once and for all. It's good, I like it, I might use it. But, there isn't enough content there to justify buying the whole book. You could come up with this yourself (you may already have).

I mentioned Dragonlance a whiles back, but only like it as novel and game I have seen of it wants to just follow the novel too.

Dark Sun Genesys sounds great...
That's too bad. That sounded like the biggest selling point for me.

I prefer homebrew settings - my favourite are grimdark and not too fantastical. I quite like Greyhawk and have played in some games in Faerun.
I am playing a game over Foundry and Zoom in Ebarron, which is quite fun.

Also Honourable mention for Adventures in Middle Earth, as a fully paid up Tolkien geek I love the way the 5e rules have been customised to fit the setting.

If we're talking "vanilla" medieval fantasy settings, I'd probably go with Greyhawk. Forgotten Realms are overused and a tad too high magic/cartoony for me and I'm just getting into Mystara through an ongoing game I'm not much excited about. Effectively, many of the settings tweak the gameplay experience quite a bit, so it's almost like picking a different game to play.

Planescape is clearly my favourite, if the profile picture wasn't an indication enough. It's different, gritty, surreal and allows for a lot of creativity, original ideas and unexpected twists. I tend to take the published books at face value and then tweak/customize much of the canon in order to maintain that sense of wonder. On top of that, it can accomodate an urban adventure in Sigil as much as it can host a planeswalking exploration campaign.

The post-apocalyptic Dark Sun is another favourite, it's so different and evocative, though I'd argue it loses a bit of its charm if you take it into less lethal, newer editions of D&d.

Birthright is also great for experiencing that "domain level" play, with elements of management and strategy. Haven't seen such a solid mechanic since probably PF1's Kingmaker or the recent Strongholds & Followers by Matt Coleville.

Midnight is also great and receiving a 5e update soon, basically a Tolkienesque "what if the bad guys had won" deal. Unique atmosphere, grim, gritty and abolishing several things D&d takes for granted like magic, shops, vendors etc.

Much as I liked the Dragonlance novels, can't say I'm crazy for the setting itself. Same for Ravenloft, it's great when you read it but when implemented it's a bit rough

I actually really like Forgotten Realms. I just wish they would publish more places outside of the Sword Coast.

I also love Forgotten Realms, but before the spellplague lol !!

Eberron

I'm a big fan of Eberron and Golarion, and I've even found myself fascinated by Grim Hollow and begun dipping my toes into Tal'dorei (I'll get around to actually watching Critical Role eventually), buuuuuut...

My heart will always belong to Greyhawk. Maybe I'm just an old fart or stuck in the past, but I don't know, I just really like the lore of the old Greyhawk books and gazetteers. It was the first setting I got to experience, and the one that really got me interested in all the D&D lore bits from when my dad introduced me to the hobby back in ye olde 2e days.

I like Eberron too, am currently playing in an Eberron game over Zoom. Would really like to try Dark Sun. Not D&D but I enjoy the Old World setting of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

I recently stumbled into Numenera's Ninth World setting (Beneath the Monolith is the 5e conversion). It fascinated me, and I was fortunate enough that Qralloq advertised a game for it shortly after. I'm really impressed by Monte Cook's work on it! It stimulates a sense of wonder and imaginative wanderlust that I haven't felt in a long time. There feels like so much mystery right underneath the surface, and the book is dripping with adventure hooks.

I just picked up one of the novels set there, and I fully expect to run a game (Either Cypher System or 5e) in that world in the future.

How far in the future? Expressing interest nice and early! :D

Roughly one billion years. It's called the ninth world because human civilization had peaked and crashed eight times before the time of the game, leaving all kinds of crazy remnants around of forgotten technological epochs.

I think he was asking how far in the future would Skeptical be running a game, not how far in the future it will be set.

Yes, Skeptical will be running it in roughly one billion years. PBP is slow, don't forget 😋

As for regular dnd settings, I have only played dnd 5e and homebrew ones. I actually loved the scifi setting I played a while back where we were all police officers helping out the alien government that took over Earth in Bellflower California in the year 3022 but we were in a simulation the whole time so we didn't know which was the real one to the simulation one. That game never finished but it was an interesting concept.

Also Legend of Zelda dnd where we played in the locales of Hyrule and the places in Ocarina of time was pretty fun.



As for published modules, I have only played Dungeon of the mad mage which was pretty good too.

I enjoyed the setting of The Masters Vault one-shot I ran as a dm which you can play on roll20 too.

I usually just play on roll20 and discord so haven't played in many settings though.

I would love to one day play in a Critical role dnd game and stuff one day tho but do love homebrew settings and would love to create my own one day to run on roll20 and discord.

I'm just enjoying the world I have created for the quest for the Briarwood inn play by post game too as it is just an inn and Village which are in a Demiplane and the dark dangerous woods of Whimsy that has invaded that Demiplane too.

I tend to think of homebrewing as half the fun, and that's been true as well for most of the GMs I've played with, but of the published settings my favorite is Eberron. It's thematically tight and stays away from being quite so medieval Europe as a lot of the other settings. Plus I'll always think pretty fondly of the old 3.5 version for going a bit more cinematic than regular D&D.