So what's your ideal fantasy setting for D&D / NWN / gaming?

[ImStrokerAce]

I do enjoy the MERPS ( Middle Earth Role Playing) system; but if you think ALFA is deadly, the crits on that system are just plain harsh for an online game. They are wonderfully amusing however! As a bonus you never loose respect for armed foes; regardless of CR/lvl.
I think it has already been mentioned, but from a game where many DMs/GMs change the world it seems to me that unless you have an overlord of Canon; aka: Greenwood in FR, the conflicting concepts clash.
As an 'ideal' world ( fine use of that term in the OP BTW) I personally like low magic senerios, where any magical /item weapon is special, but then everyone just ends up being spell casters in some shape/ form or fashion so then you reduce their abilities... and that can of worms gets opened.

[oldgrayrogue]

Some of these responses boggle my mind.


If we want things that are grittier and more realistic, why are we in Forgotten Realms-- the land of two tarrasques, where banging the goddess of magic is a viable path to power, and where every generation involves the apotheosis of at least one mortal? Is it just that it's the canon we all know, or do the majority of people not say anything because Forgotten Realms is just fine for them?

Like kid said, we come here for the RP. IMO a grittier setting would produce even better RP. I like magic in the world -- just not in the hands of the PCs. Same with "special" races. IMO when magic and special races are something rare they lend that mysterious mystical quality that really allows for immersive fantasy RP. When any old hack with a scroll and a few levels can weave magic it kind of loses its allure. I'd be all for ditching FR if ALFA ever wanted to go in that direction.

[Zelknolf]

I guess the part that has me sounding so miffed in that comment is that I have built a setting/game that addressed a lot of these concerns (I also prefer playable races to be more mundane, prefer gods who never manifest personally, prefer religions whose results are best attributed to being big stable social institutions, prefer some tangible reason that the world hasn't already turned into an extreme magical utopia [which generally means wiping out the whole school of conjuration and disallowing permanent magic items]), but people seemed largely uninterested. Which I guess is where my own reason for being here is-- I don't have an audience if I work on a grittier world.

[Xanthea]

Setting is fairly low down on the list of reasons to play a game/PW. A good setting is nice to have, but it's pretty high up the hierarchy of PW needs pyramid.

[gribo]

Eventually someone will manage to hack the Witcher 3 to support multiplayer, just wait and see..

[Dorn]

Love Forgotten Realms.

The North is my favourite area by far - intersection of Spine of the World mountain savagery and wildness, High Forest mystery, Waterdhavian and spreading, constantly challenged, civilisation along with ancient lore is awesome.

I also dont feel that it's 'over-lored'.

You know i loved the long road so much, but Loudwater was one of my fav servers for the feeling that the towns were the only bastions of safety even while staying on the road, and gods help you if you went off it. And the DM supported shade war campaign there showed just how all the meta-lore and meta-maps of FR we all look at go out the window when you're in the middle of chaos or beyond civilisation living by wits alone and faced with uncertainty at every turn. Sure you could go and read up that the rediscovered dwarf-hold was from Lost Kingdom X - but it didn't mean anything to us in game or OOC...were were just reacting to totally new stories and places.

Perhaps the pivotal twist and major antagonist in the whole shadewar in Loudwater wasn't the Shadovar Princes, it was a creature to which there was perhaps 3 slightly nebulous lines in one of the thousand source books.

Perhaps FR is a little high on magic, but again, that can be tempered. We got our first +1 weapons and armor at level 6 or 7 on TLR under borgia as he felt the same.

So yea, FR rocks.
And DONT bring guns in - cant stand fantasy with guns.
............gnomes could go to.

[shad0wfax]

There is no "perfect" system, but I like AD&D quite a bit. If I had to pick an alternative system it would be the Mistborn system.

I like FR for the wealth of novels supporting it. Although many of them are cookie cutter fantasy, the setting is somewhat fluffy, and the religions do not necessarily make sense for the societies and geography but it does offer a great deal of filler detail for the world and its regions, making it easier for a DM to expand upon.

I do prefer the 2e system to the 3.5 system, however, and 2e is definitely more tame in terms of magical items and power creep than 3.5 is. 2e is also far more lethal than 3.5.

It's because of my 2e experience that I prefer FR; I actually do not care for 3.5 at all, but it's what we have to work with.

[HEEGZ]

A dark setting.

Civilization is pushed back and vast swathes of monster infested wilderness lie in between countries. Civilization is long past its prime. Nobody knows how to create magical items any more, or if they do, it's only the elder races like the elves and dwarves, and they're not sharing. If adventurers want power they get it by plundering the ruins of fallen civilizations, or slaying monsters who did that first.

All but the most secure nations suffer from a constant threat of monster raids and lose a significant chunk of their population to constant war. But beyond the usual "vermin" type monster threats there's also existential threats to the entire world. There's a very real chance that if, say, the orcs united they could just wipe humanity out entirely. But beyond the typical barbarous threat, there's also a number of darker nations along the lines of Mordor that are just more powerful than the civilized world and if they were ever to invade it would take everyone working together to have a chance of turning them back at all. Civilization's grasp on the world is tenuous, at best.

Edit - oh forgot the gods. The gods are less defined than in FR. They embody general concepts, nobody is 100% sure if they actually exist or not. They don't have defined alignments beyond what common sense would dictate and there are a good number of different ways someone can worship each one. Certainly nobody ever sees them.

Double edit - all the other races are fine, but no gnomes. Gnomes are terrible.

This is pretty close to how I DM the Realms in my PnP games. Evil humanoids run amok, the Zhents are a very powerful faction, sorta like the Nazis at the height of their conquest of Europe. Dragons are much more visible and control larger swaths of Faerun. The only kingdoms that are strong are Amn, Cormyr, and Thay, with the rest struggling to survive. There is a good chance a given town on a map is now a ruin and home to a young dragon, a goblin village, or a shuffling graveyard of undead previous inhabitants. Magic is less prevalent, and since I'm DMing 5e, I also cap them at +1. There is no such thing as a +1 sword or +1 armor. All magical items get a story and are significant, usually with a name. I may have to steal your ideas about making the Gods less defined and more of an abstraction. I can already think of a few ways that 5e makes this easier for me to do (cleric domains and Order of Gauntlet amalgamation).

Currently experimenting with PCs with no level granted feats, only attribute bonuses. Feats can be earned via roleplay, or are simply given to certain races or classes. I also am experimenting with increased critical hit damage, more like 3e, where two handed weapons can give 3x damage instead of 2x, that sort of thing. Also, I am experimenting with 4e minions. Combat still takes longer than I care for. 5e has an optional rule in the DMG for massive damage which I am using (taking more than half max HP in damage demands CON save or hit 0 HP/stunned).

Anyways, I DM the FR because most of my fluff books are for it, thanks to ALFA. I really like the pantheons and deities and various factions. There is a little bit of everything for me to start from idea-wise, and then I tweak from there. Purple Dragon Knights are famed Realms wide, and one of the only successful organizations holding back evil and maintaining an actual kingdom. The orcs have conquered most of the North... Adventurers are a brave bunch in a cruel world.

Probably the only thing I want to do differently is to make combats much more deadly for the PCs. I'm really into permadeath and like low level play and making new PCs. My players do not share my enthusiasm though, and so things get fairly close, but I usually give them some advice, or don't take the best actions for a creature/NPC in order not to finish off a PC. When one of my sons was DMing me last year, I intentionally sacrificed one of my PCs and rolled a new one. His death was one of my most memorable ever, and a reminder to me that I really do love permadeath settings, that are gritty, hostile, and super high stakes for all involved.

Also, I do allow guns in my FR. They are largely in the hands of gnomes (some Gondians, if they are encountered), and gnomes are the tinkerers/inventors of my FR. Wizards create most of the magic items, but the devices and things are usually made by gnomes, dwarves and kobolds.

Hmm, I tightly restrict race choices. My players can play humans, dwarves or elves at will really. Most of my players are not mature enough to handle roleplaying the other races. Arakkoa are not permitted for any reason, and I also restrict underdark races. For classes, so far I have only outright said no to Warlocks. I am very much a FTR/ROG/WIZ/CLR type of player, but we get a nice mix of paladins, rangers, bards, sorcs and druids. My last PC was a paladin, and my next one may be as well (since I killed off my first paladin before he hit level 4, hehe).

Finally, I am still learning how well 5e works at mid levels, since it's only been out a year. It is definitely an easy to tweak system, and I find the FR works really well as a base setting, but is usually far too "nice" for me as presented. I remember reading once that Ed Greenwood's FR was much less tame than the published materials, and after that I started focusing on tearing apart the Realms and basically reeking havoc and destruction everywhere. This week, my players were trying to travel from a village along the Long Road to another one a week's journey away. They randomly encountered Uthgardt tribes who attacked on sight, an orc patrol, and a group of evil cultists who nearly wiped them out (and some escaped). The PCs are definitely heroes wherever they go, because they are one of the only forces capable of holding back the tide of evil that is washing over my setting,

This was a bit rambling, but I think you can get the idea of how I run the Realms. I think I would also enjoy playing in Dark Sun or Ravenloft, but honestly don't know much about them. For sci-fi settings I really love Mass Effect and Star Wars and have spent maybe 10-20 hours brainstorming ideas for how I would DM PCs in both settings. Gotta stop!

[edit]
Okay, going to permit myself one more comment. It is in regards to metallurgy. There is a pretty front and center technology difference among groups. Goblinoids and most humans use low quality iron. Steel is only created in the castle forges where the few master armorsmiths and weaponsmiths are found among humanity. Elves are drawn to bronze, and only their princes can afford to commision mithril from the dwarves. Dwarves work in all metals, and are the only ones that can work mithril and adamantine. I also implement item breakage rules, and each metal has an AC and HP for breakage purposes. Adamantine has the highest AC and HP, and so on.

Half Plate in my games is always bronze, like greek style hoplite armor of old. Chainmail is usually iron, sometimes steel, and rarely mithril. Full plate is almost non-existant. Only knights from a castle, with squires and the whole nine yards actually own full plate, and wear it on a regular basis. Besides them, maybe the occasional paladin or war cleric, but that's about it. The best mass-worn armors are transitional armors like platemail/splint/halfplate, which end up with an AC around 17 without a shield. I keep all AC pretty low, in keeping with the design philosophy of 5e, and I take it a step further by limiting how high AC can go. More hits keep combat interesting, and ensure things are more tense and deadly.

I forgot to mention there are also non-metallic materials, primarily insect carapaces, dragon scales/teeth, and parts from exotic creatures. Having these forged into usable items is a quest on their own, and results in a magic item usually. I don't really use masterwork items. Better quality gear will be made of steel and harder to break. After that it pretty much needs to be magical to get any better.

[Zelknolf]

I remember reading once that Ed Greenwood's FR was much less tame than the published materials,

It's probably worth noting that publishers prevented Greenwood from adding more sex to Forgotten Realms, not grit or violence. Greenwood's very firmly in the camp of "boobs are less offensive than guts, so this monster has boobs. And this frog. And this log. *oglaf citation*"

Not that this should change the game you play-- if you like a dirty and violent Forgotten Realms and your players do too that's a good time-- just that the citation is a much longer discussion that gets into the bedroom habits of Greenwoodian liches, and it's unhappy times.

[Xanthea]

I may have to steal your ideas about making the Gods less defined and more of an abstraction.

If I can make a suggestion, most gods should be able to be worshiped by people/clerics of any alignment. "Luck" is a concept that anyone can get behind, as is "Craft" or "War". Maybe one group of people worships war with cunning strategy and tactics, and another group worships it with bloodthirsty slaughter and berserking, maybe the religious practices are different to the point of the two groups not even being able to recognize each other, but it's still the same god.

But even with the gods with slightly stricter domains, "Good", "Evil", "Order" or "Chaos", for example, there's still a huge amount of diversity allowable in those domains. Maybe one person is a CG freedom fighter working to bring down tyrants and the other is a CE mass murderer working to topple civilizations because it's funny. But the god of chaos is just fine with either of them.

And maybe it's a perfectly viable point of view to think that maybe these divine powers don't come from gods at all. Maybe they've just tapped into arcane power in a different way, or maybe it's just that you can draw power from a defined concept that sapient minds recognize as an important defined concept.

[HEEGZ]

I remember reading once that Ed Greenwood's FR was much less tame than the published materials,

It's probably worth noting that publishers prevented Greenwood from adding more sex to Forgotten Realms, not grit or violence. Greenwood's very firmly in the camp of "boobs are less offensive than guts, so this monster has boobs. And this frog. And this log. *oglaf citation*"

Not that this should change the game you play-- if you like a dirty and violent Forgotten Realms and your players do too that's a good time-- just that the citation is a much longer discussion that gets into the bedroom habits of Greenwoodian liches, and it's unhappy times.

Yeah, I try not to think about that too much. I just took that tidbit as license to butcher the FR and make it the way I want it, and that is less Candyland, and more Apocalypse Now.

[HEEGZ]

I may have to steal your ideas about making the Gods less defined and more of an abstraction.

If I can make a suggestion, most gods should be able to be worshiped by people/clerics of any alignment. "Luck" is a concept that anyone can get behind, as is "Craft" or "War". Maybe one group of people worships war with cunning strategy and tactics, and another group worships it with bloodthirsty slaughter and berserking, maybe the religious practices are different to the point of the two groups not even being able to recognize each other, but it's still the same god.

But even with the gods with slightly stricter domains, "Good", "Evil", "Order" or "Chaos", for example, there's still a huge amount of diversity allowable in those domains. Maybe one person is a CG freedom fighter working to bring down tyrants and the other is a CE mass murderer working to topple civilizations because it's funny. But the god of chaos is just fine with either of them.

And maybe it's a perfectly viable point of view to think that maybe these divine powers don't come from gods at all. Maybe they've just tapped into arcane power in a different way, or maybe it's just that you can draw power from a defined concept that sapient minds recognize as an important defined concept.

Good points. I haven't really figured out how to tone things down. I really enjoy the deities, and my players are entirely ignorant of them, so that has put me in the position of having to teach them OOC, reveal things IC only based on Religion skill checks (my go to method ATM), or just ignore things mostly. I need to spend more time thinking about abstractions like you mentioned. I definitely like the idea of separate dwarf/elf/human pantheons, orcs having Gruumsh and so on. I should probably look at how other settings handle dieties. Somebody made comments earlier about the Grayhawk deities with monikers that sounded pretty compelling.

My most recent brainstorming about this resulted in the idea of the Dragons that are taking over, are establishing draconic kingdoms, and even usurping deity portfolios... And then I wanted to read up on Dragonlance and got sort of overwhelmed and stopped.

[Xanthea]

I definitely like the idea of separate dwarf/elf/human pantheons, orcs having Gruumsh and so on.

If I can make yet another suggestion.

How about they're not separate gods, but the worship of different races towards them is so different that (most) people don't even realize they're the same gods?

Going back to the "War" comment. Maybe the elves worship the god of war through perfect defensive strategy and unmatched skill and training allowing them to win their battles with few casualties. Whereas orcs worship the same god through gleefully throwing thousands of bodies into the breech until they win through savagery and weight of numbers.

They probably don't even call the god by the same name, the depictions are completely different, religious practices are obviously completely different as well. If all (or most) of the gods are indiscriminate enough that they allow these vastly different approaches to worshiping them it really builds their feeling of them as abstract concepts rather than actual beings.

[HEEGZ]

Ah, so the deities are more represented by natural/mystical forces as manifested in the domains and portfolios of the multiverse. Death is a portfolio/domain unto itself, and called one thing by humans, another by dwarves, etc. Humans might call on Tempos, orcs on Gruumsh, and so on, but they are just personifying the mystical domain of warfare. I'll revisit my 5e DMG and PHB, as they mentioned something like this, but I only glossed over it at the time.

[Xanthea]

Exactly. The humans might portray Tempus as a man with a big beard and a warhammer, the orcs might portray Gruumsh as a one-eyed orc with an axe, and the elves might portray it as a female elf with a bow, but they're all the same concept manifested in different ways.

If you want to flesh it out beyond that no doubt all the races have their different mythology associated with them. The orcs might say he created them to be the perfect race, the elves might say that she came into the world and taught them warfare to help them in defending themselves from a cruel world, and who knows who's actually right? Maybe none of them are.

And while we're on the subject. Maybe some natural concepts just don't interest certain races enough to bother giving them a name at all. Maybe dwarves just don't have a racial name for the god of luck because relying on such things is too fickle for their nature.