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?

There have been a few. One I've seen mentioned over the years is Uresia, though I haven't read it. The Keranak Kingdoms book for Barebones Fantasy is also completely system agnostic and would work well for someone who wants a high fantasy setting done in broad strokes. I'd actually planned to run a Savage Worlds game in the Keranak Kingdoms some years ago but we ended up playing something else.

I'd forgotten about Monster Island - definitely one of the best books in the Mythras range.

I thought about writing a Star Wars knockoff setting for Mini-Six Bare Bones.

It would be my own take on a Star Wars style Universe.  For example there would be multiple factions, probably four major ones, each with a differing view about the morals of cloning.  Star Paladins would hate it because the can feel emotions. 

In addition I would put in a few rules for how the Force Powers works.

In the home brew department, I wouldn't mind something Mass Effect themed.  I've seen a few home brews and I've had a lot of fun playing Once More into the Void (very inspired by ME2.)

I like the ones in Index Card RPG, of course. 

They are rather simple, but do have a fair amount of flavor, enough to spark your own ideas.
 
In the Master Edition book there are:

Alfiem - fantasy, havent actually played this yet because,
Warp Shell - scifi, nice worlds, several factions, interesting depth of tech.  played one, prepping another.
Ghost Mountain - wierd west, meets Supernatural, i am prepping an adventure for this one.
Vigilante City - superheroes, looks fun, havent played one yet.
Blood and Snow - early humans, survival.  this one seems the weakest to me in terms of background and imagination, it just seems rather bleak and pointless.

For home brew I am trying to 'port' Gamma World to ICRPG system.  Lots to do here.

Quote from: FASAfan on January 24, 2025, 11:25:38 AMI 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.

What's to laugh at? The Greybox Realms for 1e is a magnificent piece of design. It can stand and bang with any setting ever released on its own merit, and is easily to convert to other systems if you have the time. Greybox Realms and Greyhawk remain the highest standard of DnD settings by design. /shrug

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.

TSR nosedived themselves and all their settings, heh. But yeah, just take the boxset and run! Everything else is unnecessary.

Quote from: FASAfan on January 24, 2025, 11:25:38 AMI'm also with you about Spelljammer.  I actually hate the idea and love the setting at the same time!

I bought Spelljammer sight unseen when it dropped. When I cracked it open I was like "WTF is this Baron Munchausen shit?" I was really disappointed. It wasn't until I sent to convention like a year later, when I got roped into playtesting an adventure for TSR at like 2AM in the morning, unbeknownst to me with their staff. I had the privilege of being GMed by none other than the Sage, Skip Williams, himself and he single-handedly made me a super-fan of Spelljammer.

Dude was the best GM I've ever played with. I learned more about how far I could go as a GM from that weekend with him, than the previous 15+ years. Spelljammer RULES.

I recently just finished the book "The Discarded Image" By C.S Lewis, one of the few things of his I had not read yet (besides his fiction which I'm not a big fan of compared to his non-fiction, which is often the reverse for me with many authors)

But the book covered the medieval mindset, and it's corresponding cosmology and literature, it has further emboldened my enjoyment of Ars Magica's Mythic Europe as a game setting, while it takes some liberties, those liberties are almost always in service to making it playable. The contrast of historical interlaced with an older cosmological framework being treated as true is quite refreshing and grounds the setting as being quite plausible under the assumption we are accepting the premises of the people of that time period.

Early World Of Darkness basically everything before revised and some of the revised edition lore I found very interesting, even if I didn't much care for the specific details or handling of it. the overall cosmology and making connections across the game books felt like a game in and of itself, which was good because the storyteller system itself is dookie and I could never get a game off the ground using it.

Mystara hands down the best "generic" D&D setting, at least it's the one that extrapolates the game mechanics and lore and creates the best verisimilitude, as the transition from low level, domain level, and Immortal level play is the most seamless of all the game settings.

Though as a counterpoint it suffers one of the problems White Wolf games, which is the setting is so fleshed out it leaves little room to include your own stuff unless your willing to ignore things, one of the reasons I'd rather run my own world inspired by Mystara as opposed to playing directly in it.

Warhammer Fantasy / The Old World (please, don't even mention Age of Sigmarines...)
Middle Earth (these days through TOR2)
Warhammer 40k (mostly in a deep setting like Imperium Maledictum or Rogue Trader, rather than W&G though)
Conan's Hyborian Age (mostly through the soon to be released Monolith TTRPG)
Trudvang (you asked about the setting, not the system, though I like it too)

I think I could easily appreciate Golarion from what I saw in the video game Pathfinder Kingmaker. I could be interested in Forbidden Lands too, still have to fully go through the PDFs. I also think I could appreciate Solomon Kane or any "van Helsing"-like setting (I know Lex Occultum, and I like it). I'm a bit ashamed but I only discovered recently it was possible to buy a print-on-demand Rules Cyclopedia on DTRPG, so Mystara may join my list in the future.

But my forever main and most played/GMed is definitly Warhammer Fantasy / The Old World.

I've enjoyed Doskvol (from Blades in the Dark) enough to port it to D&D for a Doskvol: Dragon Heist remix and it worked pretty well. I really can't stand Forgotten Realms and, although Golarion seemed sparkly and new when I first started looking at Pathfinder (mostly because I'd tired of D&D and I had some players willing to try it), the more I look at it the more kitchen sink and overcrafted it is.

I find I prefer smaller, expandable settings. Just started looking at some of the Free League properties and am liking those for that very reason.

Quote from: Shteve on January 27, 2025, 03:15:48 PMI've enjoyed Doskvol (from Blades in the Dark) enough to port it to D&D for a Doskvol: Dragon Heist remix and it worked pretty well. I really can't stand Forgotten Realms and, although Golarion seemed sparkly and new when I first started looking at Pathfinder (mostly because I'd tired of D&D and I had some players willing to try it), the more I look at it the more kitchen sink and overcrafted it is.

I find I prefer smaller, expandable settings. Just started looking at some of the Free League properties and am liking those for that very reason.

Thank you for your feedback. Any thoughts about Symbaroum?

Symbaroum looks cool - I've been doing the 2025 Character Creation Challenge this month (entries on my blog) and did Symbaroum on Day 7. I like what I read of it, but have only really scratched the surface. I've only just found a handful of local players that are willing to try non-D&D game - our first session is tomorrow - and I have Symbaroum on the list to experiment with, though I think we'll start with Dragonbane.