Is there a setting that you dig, but have yet to run/play in?

This question was prompted in my head talking about "Systems Failure" in another thread. I really like the whole concept, but have never gotten a chance to run/play it.

Well, the new Luther Arkwright book for RQ6 pops to mind. I've been wanting to run something a bit 'secret agent' for a while now.
I'm writing up notes and such... and started a re-read of the comics... but I'm not sure when I'll get around to running it.

The Numenera setting is interesting to me for its call-outs to various stories I like.

Pirates of the Spanish Main...not a fan of the Savage Worlds rules but would try them if it meant playing pirates (with the magical/fantastical bullshit excised).

Something I've dabbled with a tiny bit, but never got to run a campaign in, is Kingdoms of Kalamar.

And, oddly enough, it's not a very sexy setting.  The core book is system-neutral but written for D&D.  So all the tropes are there, but it's kind of the opposite of, say, Eberron, that's trying to be D&D with a twist.  I think it's just that it hits the Goldilocks zone of detail for me, with enough details to key off of, but no canon timeline, and no Elminster type NPCs.

Going by their house forum people are still playing it somewhere, although I'd be surprised if they ever got a sales boom again.  I'd still like to run it someday, but now it's up against things like Qelong, Yoon-Suin or my own incomplete notes for a hexcrawl, so the odds are not great.

Quote from: Saladman;835592Something I've dabbled with a tiny bit, but never got to run a campaign in, is Kingdoms of Kalamar.

And, oddly enough, it's not a very sexy setting.  The core book is system-neutral but written for D&D.  So all the tropes are there, but it's kind of the opposite of, say, Eberron, that's trying to be D&D with a twist.  I think it's just that it hits the Goldilocks zone of detail for me, with enough details to key off of, but no canon timeline, and no Elminster type NPCs.

Going by their house forum people are still playing it somewhere, although I'd be surprised if they ever got a sales boom again.  I'd still like to run it someday, but now it's up against things like Qelong, Yoon-Suin or my own incomplete notes for a hexcrawl, so the odds are not great.

Your description makes Kalamar sound tolerable, which, believe me, is a complement, as I find most settings annoying when not flat-out shitty. Supposed "twists on D&D" are tiresome. If you're gonna twist it, why are we playing D&D at all?

Quote from: Saladman;835592Something I've dabbled with a tiny bit, but never got to run a campaign in, is Kingdoms of Kalamar.

And, oddly enough, it's not a very sexy setting.  The core book is system-neutral but written for D&D.  So all the tropes are there, but it's kind of the opposite of, say, Eberron, that's trying to be D&D with a twist.  I think it's just that it hits the Goldilocks zone of detail for me, with enough details to key off of, but no canon timeline, and no Elminster type NPCs.

Going by their house forum people are still playing it somewhere, although I'd be surprised if they ever got a sales boom again.  I'd still like to run it someday, but now it's up against things like Qelong, Yoon-Suin or my own incomplete notes for a hexcrawl, so the odds are not great.

Your description makes Kalamar sound tolerable, which, believe me, is a compliment, as I find most settings annoying when not flat-out shitty. Supposed "twists on D&D" and settings full of precious Mary Jane NPCs are tiresome. If you're gonna twist it, why are we playing D&D at all?

Oh man, that's a big ol' list, owning at least in part to the fact that I've homebrewed my settings for most of my life.

Tékumel. When I run this one, I'm doing it EPT style: PCs as "barbarians" fresh off the boat, go off dungeon crawlinh through the tsuru'um (underworld ruins of the high-tech ancients) beneath Jakálla, and if they survive, get rich enough to buy citizenship, clan adoption and appointments to political, military and/or religious office. Now if only I can find a perfect system! The dungeon-crawling bits suggest a TSR/OSR D&D variant, but the class structure doesn't strike me as particularly conductive to this sort of game, and neither does the arcane/divine magic divide.

Talislanta. The thing about Talislanta is that I'm attracted to it by its lush aesthetics. Truth is, a Talislanta campaign probably looks a lot like a D&D or Runequest campaign with exquisite, exotic "color" (to borrow one of the more useful bits of Forge jargon), so it's not really that high up my want-to-run-someday list. But it's definitely there.

Glorantha. The Third Age is a classic but I think I'd rather run a Second Age game. The God-Learners read like Mage: The Awakening's hubris-plagued Atlanteans cranked up to 11, and the Wyrm's Friends are, well, fricking dragon-people and serpent-worshippers. You can have your pro-Orlanthi and pro-Lunar players each roll up their Orlanthi barbarians and [strike]Lunar[/strike] Dara Happan soldiers and they can team up against their common, greater enemies without hassle.

Third Imperium. My only Traveller campaign was ostensibly set in the Third Imperium, but it was too short-lived for the Zhodani, the Vargr, the Aslan, the Hivers, the Imperial Marines, Solomani totalitarianists and other OTU stalwarts to really make an appearance. So I still have the nagging feeling I haven't "really" played in the Third Imperium, and I'd like to revisit it with a vengeance some day.

Forgotten Realms. I've played in FR games a bit as a teen back in the day, and more often as a consumer of D&D-branded PC games, which has made the setting grow on me in spite of the (admittedy easily ignored, but still) annoying proliferation of über-NPCs. Since Leiber seems to have been such a huge influence on Ed Greenwood, I still want to run a city-centric D&D game, tentatively called "Ill-Met in Luskan" with PCs dungeon-crawling through Old Illusk and getting caught up with intrigue in the meantime.

Azeroth (from Warcraft). All right, I admit it. As a lapsed, if casual WC3 and WoW player, Warcraft "lore" is a guilty pleasure of mine, or at least it was up until Cataclysm. It's silly as hell but unashamedly huge in scope and yet still feels unpretentiously fun. I'd love to run a big ol' game set circa Burning Crusade and/or Wrath of the Lich King with ridiculously powerful PCs mowing down legions of mooks and engaging outrageous, earth-shattering bosses in long, drawn-out fights. Unfortunately, neither White Wolf's official d20-powered RPG nor J Arcane's clever, pared-down-d20 Drums of War RPG quite cut it for me. Maybe I'd be better served by a supers RPG.

Eclipse Phase. It's been on the list since I picked it up as a thank-you to the good people at the Manhattan Compleat Strategist (ah, the halcyon days of the strong real and weak dollar...) back in 2009, only to be inadvertently introduced to, and captivated by, new school SF. I intend to run this soon enough. The Ego Hunter adventure sounds fun if only for the "everyone plays the same character, slightly edited" novelty schtick.

Hyperborea (from AS&SH). One of the best S&S settings out there. I love everything about this game, but I often wonder whether DCC or RQ6 would do it more justice than even the excellent (second only to ACKS, IMHO) TSR D&D-derived engine Jeff Talanian put together.

Auran Empire (from ACKS). Technically this is not out yet, but most of my homebrewed D&D settings have been variations on the "fallen empire" or "Dark Ages" theme; and Autarch's take on the it, like ACKS itself, seems particularly suited to my gaming proclivities. There's an adventure module in the works and it'll include a setting primer, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Numenera. The OSR reawakened my interest in science-fantasy gaming and Numenera actually felt like a breath of fresh air by dint of being comprehensive and playable without being too gonzo or whimsical. Still iffy on the system, though.

Quote from: Simlasa;835588Luther Arkwright

I'm still tracking down the comics, which I haven't read, but I'm already enjoying this book as the ultimate RQ6 supplement. It's got rules for just about everything I've ever wanted to run with the system, but was too lazy to homebrew: vehicles (Day After Ragnarok!), psionics (Dark Sun!), space travel (Star Wars!) etc.

Quote from: The Butcher;835597Azeroth (from Warcraft). All right, I admit it. As a lapsed, if casual WC3 and WoW player, Warcraft "lore" is a guilty pleasure of mine, or at least it was up until Cataclysm.

I've always wanted to play a 'real' RPG version of WoW. The official D20 materials might make for some decent reference material but I wonder if it would work with some OSR thing.

QuoteNumenera.... Still iffy on the system, though.

Yeah, that's mostly what's held me back. Again, I wonder if it might easily be ported to something I already know and like.

The 4th Age - I've pretty much loved the setting of Earthdawn ever since I found out about it. The rules seem overly complex, but at least they do model in-setting realities. Heck, the ED guys took a lot of the stuff present in D&D(dungeons to explore, character levels, spell slots) and wove them into something really neat. Not only are there in-setting explanations for a number of things, but those explanations are actually good!

Quote from: Saladman;835592Something I've dabbled with a tiny bit, but never got to run a campaign in, is Kingdoms of Kalamar.

And, oddly enough, it's not a very sexy setting.  The core book is system-neutral but written for D&D.  So all the tropes are there, but it's kind of the opposite of, say, Eberron, that's trying to be D&D with a twist.  I think it's just that it hits the Goldilocks zone of detail for me, with enough details to key off of, but no canon timeline, and no Elminster type NPCs.

I once drew up a fictional city for a Vampire: the Masquerade game with people who had never played it, and I decided I would very much appeal to stereotype. So you had a Ventrue Prince, a Gangrel Sheriff, a Brujah-led Anarch gang, Lasombra and Tzimisce Bishops working to undermine the Camarilla, you know, the same old same old.

I showed it to an old gaming buddy who wasn't involved with that particular game and he commented something along the lines of, "your characters are stereotypical, but they are rich" -- and that's because, once I noted down who occupied which seats, and what sort of relationship I wanted them to have with each other, I had to flesh them out. I had to come up with a reason why the Brujah Anarch leader hated the Ventrue Prince, so I decided the city's previous Prince was an idealistic Brujah philosopher-king who was double-crossed by his ferocious Ventrue Sheriff. I wanted the Ventrue Primogen to be both a martinet and a business powerhouse, so I decided he was a Confederate veteran who founded an arms company after the Civil War, and threw in the One Arm flaw. And so on.

What makes me, both as a reader and as a gamer, engage with a setting is not so much exoticism or novelty (though those can be cool, too), but depth. Depth is not really an abundance of information, which can feel both overwhelming (as a reader) and constraining (as a GM). Depth is about building lifelike connections between individual building blocks.

To use an example from my list, Tékumel isn't amazing because of non-Western influences per se; those make it interesting, but what makes it amazing is that it's a rare representative of a non-Western setting with depth; and this depth stems not from the fact that each nation has a full-fledged artificial language or extensive lists of historical emperors or standing legions, but from the fact that it goes out of its way to detail how Tsolyáni and Mu'ugalaviyáni feel about each other, and, without explicit comparisons, allows you to draw parallels to real-world analogues (e.g. I'd say Tsolyánu is France to Mu'ugalaviyá's Germany, or maybe the Brazil to their Argentina).

It's awesome that a dedicated world-builder can craft such a unique place and draw from gaming experience to present in a manner that's both intriguing and game-table-worthy, but it's admittedly a lot easier to do so with more familiar building blocks drawn from Western history, literature and myth (to me, anyway; Prof. Barker was an expert in Native American and South Asian languages and probably knew a ton more about the Mayans or the Mughals than I could possibly muster about the Western places, epochs, traditions and fiction I'd call myself "familiar" with).

In any case, while I'm really fond of exotic worlds like Tékumel, I feel there's a lot to be said for "Goldilocks" settings.

I hope you guys are happy now: you've made me dig out my old copy of Space:1889 (GDW), a game I never got to play. Dammit. Now I really want to play this thing!

even after being burned twice by the system, I still want to run somthing like 7th Sea as a setting.

I want to run something in Dragonlance someday even though I don't care about the books or meta plot. Not sure why. there's just something orderly feeling about it I guess, and since I like the history of the game it would be like playing around with a museum piece.

Quote from: Ronin;835585Is there a setting that you dig, but have yet to run/play in?

This question was prompted in my head talking about "Systems Failure" in another thread. I really like the whole concept, but have never gotten a chance to run/play it.

Scraypers, Mechanoids, Wormwood and System Failure from Palladium: But in particular the new After the Bomb or even the original.

Meckton: Yes it is really a wargame. But it still plays well between the giant robots beating on eachother.

Cute Fuzzy "Cockfighting" Seizure Monsters for BESM: With a title like that you can guess how likely that is to attract a GM. Also Big Ears Small Mouse.

Macho Women With Guns: Yes it is really a minis wargame too. But like Melee/Wizard and Meckton, all the fun is in the posturing on the battlefield.

Buck Rodgers: Interesting setting and the PC games from SSI were great.

Quote from: Ronin;835585Is there a setting that you dig, but have yet to run/play in?

Yes, a guilty pleasure of mine : I'd like to run a Star Trek game, none of my players is even remotely interested.

Mutant Year Zero as the "metaplot" is kind of fun. Don't care much about the rules though.

Numenera though I have no idea how I would run it, I'd like to make it more than just fantasy with sci-fi trappings.

Traveller 2300 (Mongoose) : at least a one-shot of gritty sci-fi would be nice.