It's sorta hard... as a setting, I think I should say Ravenloft, but it has so much potential and it's generally so sucky... So I voted Dark Sun, which is not as great to me as a setting, because the books were so much better. At least 3.x ed. Ravenloft is better than 3.x DS... not much, and DS third really sucked. Well, whatever.
Oh, Al-Qadim's nice, too. 2ed. boxed set was great.

Hmm, no love for Kalamar?

Quote from: DeadUematsuFor me, it's Ravenloft, but I also have to agree with Jong that Lodoss, from the scraps that have been translated, appears to be a lot more interesting than any generic fantasy setting ever published for D&D.

Lodoss is, simply put, amazing. You can practically see every aspect of classic D&D in every scene.

For me, the best scene was...

Spoiler

...when the poor knight-wannabe, who has gone from a level 1 nobody to a competent swordsman throughout the series, uses both the holy and unholy swords to fight the evil goddess. I remember seeing that scene with several hardcore D&D fans, with all jaws dropping from sheer exposure to Awesomium.

:eek: :cool:

White-Wolf (Sword and Sorcery)  Ravenloft.

Ptolus was a VERY close second.

Quote from: SosthenesHmm, no love for Kalamar?

You know, calamar means "squid" in spanish. Who can play that with a straight face?


(And that without taking into account the plasmametamagic dung. Or am I thinking about that crappy Miniatures stuff? Well, who cares.)

Favourite might not be the best - the purpose of the poll needs to be made clearer

Quote from: JongWKRecord of Lodoss War, which began as a D&D campaign:




If not, either homebrew or Forgotten Realms. I never had enough exposure to Greyhawk.

HEY no fair using EXALTED art.
ok bad pun.

• DARK*SUN (orginal box set). I loved the lower magic setting, and the need to survive the desert wastelands. The near lack of even Metal and having to use Stone or wooden weapons was a bonus. My favorite class to role-play is the DS-Gladiator for a reason. I loved the Gladiator combats. Fighting had meaning and was not a "random" encounter. Sign up for a Fight in the arena. I love that. Gain Fame or Infamy for your arena battles.
  
• COUNCIL of WYRMS (box set and hardback book). What can i say about this awesome game. YOU PLAY DRAGONS. Which was awesome. I loved playing the Bronze Dragon or Copper Dragons. If released with 3e ART This would be even better. It is easy to port over to 3e rules however. Which I did once.
  
• RAVENLOFT (orginal box set). D&D Horror. If mixed with DS alittle was really great. A few of PCs were turned into Vamps or Weres. Which made them "villians" however after that point.
  
• SPELLJAMMER (orginal box set). Only played this once. But he was sweet. We used it mainly as a means to get from one D&D world to another. When I was able to take my Dark*Sun Gladiator to either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms he was a powerhouse indeed. We stopped before we got to ravenloft however.
  

Quote from: UmaSamaForgotten Realms all the way, and I got to admit that Bioware and Black Isle classics influenced me.

Yeah, put me down for that as well. I don't play D&D that often, but when I do, it's almost always been inspired by having just finished the latest Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/Neverwinter Nights game. To me, Forgotten Realms IS D&D - if I want a fantasy game with less kitchen-sink madness, I'll play something better suited to it. If I'm going to have my +2 swords of dragon-slaying and potions of cure light wounds, Forgotten Realms really feels like the setting that matches up perfectly.

Planescape, Spelljammer and Ravenloft.
 
I never got to play in any of them, though the GM used material from Ravenloft from time to time.  
 
I loved Planescape:Torment so much... a really good Planescape game would actually get me back into D&D :eek:

I voted Forgotten Realms, mostly because my first (RPG) memories were of playing FR and Dragonlance. I read a lot of the fiction that accompanied those settings but FR wins out, overall, I think. (For me.)

But Lankhmar has to be my favorite setting that I never played. I'm a huge fan Leiber's work.

Quote from: Illegible SmudgeTo me, Forgotten Realms IS D&D...

Ack... I'm feeling old I'm playing in Forgotten Realms now and having a blast, it's our current DM's fav. Back when I started playing, however, there was only the Greyhawk setting, and that is what defines DnD for me. I voted Birthright, because it's the setting I find to be the most evocative and interesting, but if it wasn't on the list I would've voted Greyhawk for the exact reason you gave for FR. It just feels cool to dig into the stuff and get the "DnD is new and cool" feeling isn't it?

Greyhawk is the setting that requires no additions or permutations whatsoever to what is presented in the Player's Handbook. High elves, gray elves, hill dwarves, mountain dwarves... Forgotten Realms ditches those for its own permutations (although it does keep the drow). Forgotten Realms deviates just enough from the core that it requires its own rules addendum.

FR was pushed really hard in the era of 2nd ed. b/c TSR wanted to distance themselves from Gygax, and Greyhawk was seen as being his baby. But the core rules were still written with Greyhawk's subraces, etc., in mind. And the spells are still named after famous Greyhawk mages like Otiluke, Tenser, Mordenkainen, et al. If it's not apparent that Greyhawk is D&D, it's due to a generation of neglect--which still continues, despite the original intention that 3rd edition would return to its roots with Greyhawk as the implied setting.

And with the arrival of Eberron, Greyhawk seems to have been nudged out for good, and FR is no longer in the spotlight. No doubt kids 10 years from now will be saying that Eberron is D&D.

I agree with Black Flag, to a point..

But I'm curious if anyone knows the RPGA numbers in Living Greyhawk and Eberron. It would be interesting to track them and see if it plays out the way BF thinks.

Because the point at which I diverge is that Eberron will become the standard. Greyhawk will be standard for as long as there is a D&D - it's too perfect of a fit.

Eberron is interesting for certain stretching of the rules, as it were; but it's just not as good a fit - IMHO.

I can't tell you the numbers but my sense is that LG is the standard. It's about 80x easier to arrange an LG game than it is for Eberron, and even then a good chunk of the Eberron players are going to be 'taste-testers'. They try it out a few times. The LG guys are there for the buffet, every day of the week.

In RPGA terms, Eberron has a bit of popularity because it is more 'open' to additions. If you want to play a duskblade or a dread necromancer or a spellscale or a goblin.. or even a ninja or whatever.. you can do that in the RPGA Eberron campaign. The LG is a bit more restrictive (although it is starting to loosen up).

Eberron is an interesting variation of D&D, and anything that fits in D&D can fit somewhere in Eberron, but it has too many changes for me. I prefer the standard planar cosmology of Greyhawk, for example.