Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 21, 2025, 05:56:15 PMBattleTech is a universe I love.  It technically counts as it has an RPG.

However, I've never run an RPG campaign in BattleTech.

I recommend Mechwarrior Destiny if you ever do.

The reason is that MW1, MW2, MW3 and a Time of War basically tried to emulate the experience of being a random pilot in the board game. You could spend an hour building a PC, but that's moment you step into a Mech you default to the board game rules where it's a 1 in 36 chance of instant death from a head hit.

Even if you do survive, you'll often find your Mech too crippled to be a Mechwarrior for long.

Destiny instead built its rules to reflect a PC being the protagonists of the novels with Mech combat similarly adjusted for theatre of the mind (with board game options) and for players to similarly be less prone to the random lethality of the war game.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 21, 2025, 05:56:15 PMBattleTech is a universe I love.  It technically counts as it has an RPG.

I have Mechwarrior Destiny on the to-play list.

I also have almost all of the Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles books from Dream Pod 9, but honestly no plans to play their games.

Greybox Forgotten Realms/2e Realms sans any of the novelization stuff. (This includes Al-Qadim, and Kara-Tur).
Marvel/DC - I'm a supers guy to the bone.
Spelljammer - I can't say enough about a setting I hated on release, then fell in love with. Meta-Gonzo glory.
Star Wars - Specifically the Old Republic era.
Talislanta - It scratches some really weird itches. It's like Flash Gordon fantasy. It's high-and-low fantasy smooshed together and anything is possible.

Rifts - strong runner up. The sheer scope of Rifts is like drinking an ocean. It's been hitting my table a lot lately. I don't draw a distinction between SWADE and original Rifts, as I use the original as lore, and SWADE is simply my engine I run everything on. There is nothing in the normal Palladium Rifts that I can't model in SWADE on the fly with relative accuracy.

All the settings I like are cancelled or have been driven into the ground by successive new editions and writer turnover. It's more or less killed my interest in ttrpgs beyond morbid fascination with the sad pathetic state of the industry. Because of dumb copyright law locking ideas for a century or longer, it's illegal for devs to recycle interesting ideas from the past. So the creative output in ttrpgs becomes progressively worse over time as the good ideas are taken, discarded and locked behind copyright jail. That's why the supermajority of the games/settings worth naming predate Web 2.0.

Of published RPG settings, Warhammer's Old World is the one I spend the most time intaking information about. After that, the Cthulhu Mythos is fascinating, especially if you apply the syncretic approach and read it as if Lovecraft, CAS, Howard, and the others were genuinely all writing in the same timeline. I have a particular love for HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands and will someday use it as a setting for an RPG campaign.

I used to be a huge Dark Souls/Bloodborne lore enthusiast. Still like it, but those four games have been pretty much tapped out for lore and I didn't find Elden Ring as interesting. And of course I love Middle Earth, but I think of it much more as a literary setting than a gaming one.

More recently, the fictional worlds that have really hooked and burrowed into my mind are the ones with the least information about them. The Dying Earth and the unnamed setting of Brian McNaughton's Throne of Bones are fascinating to me precisely because the books just give you a tiny glimpse into them. Same with video games like Skald: Against the Black Priory or Darkest Dungeon.

I usually prefer homebrew, but I like all of these:

• Hyperborea (The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea setting.)
• Monster Island (RQ6/Mythras setting)
• Aerth (Dangerous Journeys: Mythus setting) (I also tend to like "historical earth with fantasy elements" settings, in general.)
  

• Delta Green spin on modern Cthulhu mythos
• The Morrow Project post-war North America

Honorable mentions:

• I.C.E. Middle Earth - great world maps. Good campaign area source books.
• '81 or '83 World of Greyhawk - great world map, great overview without getting into too much detail.
• Wilderlands - great maps, including smaller scale making them very usable in game. Sometimes too much gonzo or high-level NPCs for my taste, though.

Shadowrun's Sixth World.

The MCU.

Conan's Hyborian Age

Alpha Complex

In no particular order:

Middle Earth (no explanation needed really) from TOR 2e

The Young Kingdoms

Greyhawk (up to 3e)

Hostile (for sci-fi)

Coriolis (have not read the new edition, but loved the original)

Hyperborea (for a S&S game)

Quote from: tenbones on January 23, 2025, 10:38:50 AMGreybox Forgotten Realms/2e Realms sans any of the novelization stuff. (This includes Al-Qadim, and Kara-Tur).

<snip>

I definitely see the merit in that. I remember suggesting using just the FR box set setting info for a campaign once and was almost laughed at.

I'm not a Dark Sun historian by any means, but didn't TSR nose-dive that beloved setting over the course of 5 years by basically writing a series of novels that made previous material moot - and then wrote RPG material to cover that, as if folks wanted to play the novels out (which I never had ANY interest in for FR or Dragonlance, either)?  Bless those that want to keep up with that lore, but I can make my own up. 

As a huge Ravenloft fan, I ignored the White Wolf 3e stuff because I could make up my own and to me it had just the same validity as that made up by fans who happened to have a license to use the material.

I'm also with you about Spelljammer.  I actually hate the idea and love the setting at the same time!

There is something I want to ask.

Do people publish setting books that are system agnostic? 

A book about a world, kingdoms, empires, wild lands, mountains, seas, cities, heroes, but nothing about game specific rules and stats because it's meant only as a world book?

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 24, 2025, 03:15:44 PMThere is something I want to ask.

Do people publish setting books that are system agnostic? 

A book about a world, kingdoms, empires, wild lands, mountains, seas, cities, heroes, but nothing about game specific rules and stats because it's meant only as a world book?

I don't think I've ever seen one, at least not one being marketed as a game product, and probably never one for an original setting. You get books like that for fictional settings outside of gaming. I have one for Discworld, and I've seen them for Narnia. I'm sure they exist for Middle-Earth, Westeros, etc. too, anything sufficiently famous.

I imagine the commercial logic in game circles is that if the customer has the option of a book with rules in it and a book with no rules, they might as well buy the former even if they don't intend to use the game rules.

It's a pity because I'd buy such a thing if it was interesting and well presented. I've thought about trying to write one, but but there doesn't seem to be a market for it.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on January 23, 2025, 06:58:46 PMI usually prefer homebrew, but I like all of these:

• Hyperborea (The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea setting.)
• Monster Island (RQ6/Mythras setting)
• Aerth (Dangerous Journeys: Mythus setting) (I also tend to like "historical earth with fantasy elements" settings, in general.)
  

• Delta Green spin on modern Cthulhu mythos
• The Morrow Project post-war North America

Honorable mentions:

• I.C.E. Middle Earth - great world maps. Good campaign area source books.
• '81 or '83 World of Greyhawk - great world map, great overview without getting into too much detail.
• Wilderlands - great maps, including smaller scale making them very usable in game. Sometimes too much gonzo or high-level NPCs for my taste, though.

I didn't realize there was a published, "Monster Island"?  I've used that name at the table, before.  Hmm.....

Hyperborea, Midnight, Greyhawk, Fr 1E.

Quote from: FASAfan on January 24, 2025, 11:25:38 AMI'm not a Dark Sun historian by any means, but didn't TSR nose-dive that beloved setting over the course of 5 years by basically writing a series of novels that made previous material moot - and then wrote RPG material to cover that, as if folks wanted to play the novels out (which I never had ANY interest in for FR or Dragonlance, either)?  Bless those that want to keep up with that lore, but I can make my own up. 

Yep.

https://darksun.fandom.com/wiki/Prism_Pentad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sun_Campaign_Setting,_Expanded_and_Revised

I disregard all of the novels and revised stuff. WOTC was smart when they made the 4th edition version of Dark Sun by resetting the timeline to just after the death of King Kalak. (An event that happens right after the launch of the original line.)

I'm on the fence about novels and meta story. Dragonlance was very sucessful for TSR. And a series of novels gives a kind of template for the feel and tone of a setting. But like in Dark Sun, they can go off-road and start "solving" the setting, an activity that should be done with care, as in the case of Dark Sun changing too much and losing a lot of it's charm.