Quote from: RPGPundit;932099The rules: It has to be a published setting, for D&D (any edition) or a published OSR/3rd-party-D&D setting.

It also must be a setting you actually either played in or DMed, not just read.

Which one did you have an actual experience of attempting and found the worst?

Forgotten Realms seemed sugar-coated when I tried playing in them. The setting was devoid of all the unglamorous parts I expected it to have, and was more like a 20th century North American society, which is not the kind of inspiration I want:).
Much later I learned that this was the setting working as intended, which only makes it less likely I'd ever try it again;).

Oddly enough all the 5e Forgotten Realms material so far has succeeded in REALLY turning me off the setting. Before it was a pretty hostile environment. Now its a bleak demon infested orc ravaged totally hostile setting.

Quote from: The Butcher;932317Mine's not so much "minus the suck" as it is "how would the whole thing play out in a sword-and-sorcery universe?"

  The Anti-Canon may work with this: the high concept is "[almost] all the gods are evil--and they aren't really gods." The so-called 'gods' are actually ancient dragons from another world who have seduced and beguiled the people of Krynn, all in the interest of their own glory. Paladine favors pampered pets, Takhisis suffering slaves, and Gilean subjects for experiments, but all of them are more interested in their own glory and status than in mortals.
   
   Kender? Paladine's attempt to make 'better' elves, who settle for childish diversions instead of being drawn to transcendent Truth and Beauty. The Cataclysm? The Kingpriest caught glimpses of the rot at the heart of Krynn, and Paladine sent it down out of a mix of offended pride and predestination paradox. The War of the Lance? Paladine and Takhisis were just going through the motions--the time-travelling shenanigans of the Legends trilogy gave both of them knowledge of the future; Paladine let it all play out as it would, while Takhisis raged futilely. Raistlin? Raistlin was being played by Paladine (who wanted him to take out Takhisis without any risk to Paladine himself), Gilean (intellectual curiosity) and the three moon 'gods', who wanted Raistlin to kill their parents so they could then strip him of his magic and take their place.

Forgotten Realms at least until Third Edition. Where up until that point it seemed that by editorial mandate they needed to copy as much from Lord of the Rings as possible imo. Dragonlance because Kenders are annoying and silly in the stories. With players almost never running them well. Certain areas of Golarion. Galt in particular. So a country in a constant of anarchy manages to fend for itself so completely due to soul sucking guillotines and a fantasy version of the KGB. With the countries bordering Galt acting very much like modern day counterparts not taking advantage. Pretty much any setting where humanity is king. At least without a good explanation. Beyond the designers like humanity and want them to be top of the food chain. While somehow stronger, smarter better races are eclipsed by humanity because "reasons".

Like the least?
Anything Forgotten Realms after 1e.  Time of Troubles. Elminster, Harpers and the rest becoming Mary Sue GMPCs, Gods getting assassinated and the powers of their "Portfolio" getting traded and stolen like sets of clothes, endless Mystra/Magister shenanigans, 73 Campaign Shattering Events...and that's all before 4th came along and dragged the setting down the toilet with wonders like the Shadowfell.  Movie series, TV series, Comics, all get reboots, if there's ever a setting that needs a reboot, it's the Forgotten Realms.

Ravenloft.  Now don't get me wrong, there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, just so...hokey in it's implementation.  It's a very rough-hewn setting that has toolmarks of the designers all over it.  
"How can we get D&D players into a position where they can have Gothic Horror adventures?"

The whole setup is so...structured.

• The Q-power level Dark Powers being able to encompass nearly anything and everything connected to the Ethereal Plane, even making a Dark Lord out of a Demigod.
• The special rules for each Realm making the D&D players actually feel fear.
• The special rules for Dark Powers Checks.
• The removal of Agency of the PCs...they are basically nothing more than actors playing bit parts in the Dark Lords' "hell episode" of Twilight Zone or Insight.

Instead of having Ravenloft be mysterious and not defined, like simply series of adventures similar to the original Ravenloft, smaller in scope...they decided to go Full.Planescape with it and Ravenloft became another Setting Defining Change.  With the Mists being able to actually remove towns and forests from the map instead of just pulling PCs into some pocket dimension, you had a choice...either your cosmology altered to allow the Dark Powers the abilities they needed to get the job done, or not.

You either completely restructured the nature of your setting's cosmology in order to make it fit, or you completely restructured Ravenloft to fit your setting. Or, a third option, you just said "What's a Setting Cosmology?"

Planescape is very similar with it's Doors to Everywhere and Lady of Pain, and Spelljammer is also similar with its structuring of the physical universe to make the worlds of D&D Multiversal.  All three of them can deliver tons of great gaming, but Ravenloft makes my teeth itch in a way the others don't, despite the quality of much of the content.

Quote from: Omega;932535Oddly enough all the 5e Forgotten Realms material so far has succeeded in REALLY turning me off the setting. Before it was a pretty hostile environment. Now its a bleak demon infested orc ravaged totally hostile setting.

Before 4e, the Forgotten Realms were effectively a theme park, to the point where Greenwood himself told in an interview that since most of the dungeons had already been stripped of loot, so he went around and put in some of his own magical items so that younger adventurers would find something.  This is also the setting where most of the epically high level characters all be Magic Users of some sort, from Bards to Wizards.  In fact, if they were near or over the highest level for the edition, they were spell casters.  In 3.x it got so silly, that it made some of us wonder how did any evil escape the might of the Elminster.  And the excuse of him having something more important to do implied that the PC's would never reach the same heights of heroism.

It also had the big problem back in 2e, that most of the 'big' adventures were done by the characters in the various themed novels.  Even if they weren't supposed to be canon, a lot of people took them as, because it's written down.

4e comes along and say what you will about the system, they tried to shake up the Realms so that real danger existed, Kingdoms were threatened and the Gods and Demons were scary once more.

Now that 5e is up to the plate, and Salvatore and Greenwood are desperately trying to fix their babies back to how it was back in 2/3e, with some admittedly limited success.  I don't see how it's bleak or as ravaged as 4e was implying.

I hated Eberron. It was supposed to be the "modern slick" setting, but it didn't hold up to any scrutiny. The place was way too damn big for what they were trying to do--the nations fighting each other were hundreds or even thousands of miles apart and the population density was super low. Even in Sharn, the population density once you account for the mile-high multi-level towers pretty much meant that the place was a ghosttown with 1/2 million inhabitants. Then you had things like the train that workers were supposed to use to commute into the cities. Of course, the costs for it were something like 1 silver per mile, so nobody could afford it on the assumed wages. Also, one nation (Breland) specialized in 'heavy industry' yet there was nothing present in the setting that actually showed the products of that.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;932546The Anti-Canon may work with this: the high concept is "[almost] all the gods are evil--and they aren't really gods." The so-called 'gods' are actually ancient dragons from another world who have seduced and beguiled the people of Krynn, all in the interest of their own glory. Paladine favors pampered pets, Takhisis suffering slaves, and Gilean subjects for experiments, but all of them are more interested in their own glory and status than in mortals.

Ooh, good one.

Quote from: HappyDaze;932603I hated Eberron. It was supposed to be the "modern slick" setting, but it didn't hold up to any scrutiny. The place was way too damn big for what they were trying to do--the nations fighting each other were hundreds or even thousands of miles apart and the population density was super low. Even in Sharn, the population density once you account for the mile-high multi-level towers pretty much meant that the place was a ghosttown with 1/2 million inhabitants. Then you had things like the train that workers were supposed to use to commute into the cities. Of course, the costs for it were something like 1 silver per mile, so nobody could afford it on the assumed wages. Also, one nation (Breland) specialized in 'heavy industry' yet there was nothing present in the setting that actually showed the products of that.

I can't soeak about the specifics of Eberron because I'm only superficially familiar woth it; but the cold, hard truth of the matter is that most people writing game settings today don't give a damn about workable fantasy economies. Which is actually sort of okay for the most part because so many players and GMs nowadays seem uninterested in engaging the world at this level. But as soon as you have PCs in mover-and-shaker positions doing epic world-shaking stuff, you risk the setting coming down on your head like a Potemkin village.

Quote from: RPGPundit;932099The rules: It has to be a published setting, for D&D (any edition) or a published OSR/3rd-party-D&D setting.

It also must be a setting you actually either played in or DMed, not just read.

Which one did you have an actual experience of attempting and found the worst?

There are several that I disliked so much that  I never ran or played them, but going by the rules you specified, I'd have to say Forgotten Realms. Or maybe Dragonlance. Both of those were crappy experiences (both as a player, not as a DM).

I'd probably have to go with Forgotten Realms. It manages to feel both overly dense with detail and shallow at the same time.

Quote from: HappyDaze;932603I hated Eberron. It was supposed to be the "modern slick" setting, but it didn't hold up to any scrutiny. The place was way too damn big for what they were trying to do--the nations fighting each other were hundreds or even thousands of miles apart and the population density was super low. Even in Sharn, the population density once you account for the mile-high multi-level towers pretty much meant that the place was a ghosttown with 1/2 million inhabitants. Then you had things like the train that workers were supposed to use to commute into the cities. Of course, the costs for it were something like 1 silver per mile, so nobody could afford it on the assumed wages. Also, one nation (Breland) specialized in 'heavy industry' yet there was nothing present in the setting that actually showed the products of that.

It was mechanically timid as well. It was supposed to have a more swashbuckling, pulpy feel. To represent that, they gave you Action Points. You could spend them before or after you rolled a d20, but before the DM told you the result. You then got to roll a d6 and it to your d20 roll. You only got a handful per level, and they only refreshed by leveling up again. You could only use one per round.

The end result was that they were so scarce that players were reluctant to use them, and when you used them you would always be unsure if they would help. You might have a decent looking roll that falls one short of success, but when you find out you failed, you are too late to use an Action Point. If you roll a one, it might seem a great time to use an Action Point, but since they add a d6, the bumps you up to 7 at best.

During the brief time we played Eberron with D20, I don't think that anyone successfully used an Action Point to pull off something cool. It felt like they really dug the Bennies in Savage Worlds, so they wanted to include them. However, they were worried about throwing off their whole perfectly designed Encounter Level system that they wanted to make sure they weren't actually useful to players.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;932822There are several that I disliked so much that  I never ran or played them, but going by the rules you specified, I'd have to say Forgotten Realms. Or maybe Dragonlance. Both of those were crappy experiences (both as a player, not as a DM).

According to the rules of the OP I couldn't pick Forgotten Realms because I'd never actually played in it... except in the form of Neverwinter Nights. But that was enough to kill my interest in the setting... it just struck me as bland mashed potato fantasy.

Thinking more on this topic, the whole "Campaign Setting" model has always been underwhelming to me. I remember excitedly buying the World of Greyhawk boxed set as a kid. I was expecting this vast sandbox for players to explore, but it was mostly zoomed out above the scale at which PCs engaged with the world. The encounter tables were cool, but the rest was mostly just fluff. Compared to something like Griffin Mountain from roughly the same era, it wasn't a good value.

I've felt that way about most campaign setting books.

To be honest I have never really pursued pre-made campaign settings. They have always either seemed to macro in scope, well above any level of detail that the PCs would engage with, or too restrictive in detail limiting my space for creativity.  There have been one or two notable exceptions where teh game world is what made me interested in the game, Skyrealms of Jorune, Blue Planet, Rocket Age, but for D&D style fantasy I would rather make up my own world.

Forgotten Realms: I read the 1e stuff and was excited. I read Ed Greenwood's crap in Dragon mag and was excited.

Ravenloft: Good at the start. As it became developed, not so good. Too developed for PCs to get a hand in.

Columbia Games' HarnWorld: This shit gassed me out. It was low-key, meaning that I could overlay onto it whatever I wanted.

Greyhawk: At first, not so gassed. Majorly lacking. Then, I realized that I could do whatever I wanted within its confines--and when those strictures didn't fit, why i would just re-work the strictures.

I don't have any other experience.

Quote from: Baulderstone;932826It was mechanically timid as well. It was supposed to have a more swashbuckling, pulpy feel. To represent that, they gave you Action Points. You could spend them before or after you rolled a d20, but before the DM told you the result. You then got to roll a d6 and it to your d20 roll. You only got a handful per level, and they only refreshed by leveling up again. You could only use one per round.

The end result was that they were so scarce that players were reluctant to use them, and when you used them you would always be unsure if they would help. You might have a decent looking roll that falls one short of success, but when you find out you failed, you are too late to use an Action Point. If you roll a one, it might seem a great time to use an Action Point, but since they add a d6, the bumps you up to 7 at best.

During the brief time we played Eberron with D20, I don't think that anyone successfully used an Action Point to pull off something cool. It felt like they really dug the Bennies in Savage Worlds, so they wanted to include them. However, they were worried about throwing off their whole perfectly designed Encounter Level system that they wanted to make sure they weren't actually useful to players.

The issue with Eberron is Keith Baker not understanding that D&D doesn't work with Pulp, and Action Points wouldn't even help.  Pulp is flashy, active and not bogged down in minutiae about how many feet of movement you can do before you get a free attack, or they get a free attack on you.

Here's the thing I know about pulp (and it may be a misconception) but in Pulp, it's rarely the 'magic user' that does all the massively flash stuff.  Most of the heroes are physical, they fight, they run, they are bigger than life in a way that most editions of D&D doesn't seem to allow players (Or it may be more a perception, rather than rules) to do the things that Doc Savage or The Shadow or The Phantom (AKA The Ghost Who Walks) were depicted as doing.

Another issue is that D&D is a game about niches and specialists to the point where you NEED teams of at least 4 to have every base covered, but in Pulp, a lot of the heroes not only could they do great feats of physical strength, but they also had the mental acuity of the great thinkers, which D&D relegates to the Wizard, and grants magic.

A lot of people here hate things like 'Mook rules', and often have this misconception about them (one on one they're no threat to Pulp Heroes, but 2+?  Yeah, you could be down for some hurtin'!), but they are a staple of Pulp, they are in fact mandatory.  But D&D (until 4e) has never been built for that in mind.

Which is why I say that Savage Worlds is the best system for it.