Quote from: Shasarak;1116971Is Darksun better for playing Desert Survival then Forgotten Realms?  Well Darksun is Desert Survival 24/7 and on the other hand the Realms has the Anauroch Desert.  So do you want to be Camel riding Nomads fighting the Zhents or do you want to be Dune Beetle riding Psionic Half giants fighting cannibal halflings?

You're comparing apples to oranges and desperately missing the point. That's like saying that Star Wars is the best of all fantasy settings, cuz you get to play laser-sword wielding space wizards that can hop around planets with countless alien creatures and any type of environment. So why would you wanna play your puny low tech knights just to have castles when you could play a Jedi and travel to a planet with antiquated cultures that have castles in them?

And the point of Dark Sun isn't Dessert Survival 24/7--that's just a feature of the world. The point of Dark Sun is playing in a brutal alien world, with limited resources and a drastically altered landscape where creatures and cultures have had to adapt in order to survive in an unforgiving land.

Some of the traditional races have been altered to live in the desert and others removed, and new races have been added to highlight the drastic differences of the world--where races like the Thri-Kreen managed to thrive, while gnomes were killed off centuries ago. Metal is scarce, so weapons are typically made of weaker materials that may break. Divine magic is channeled through the elements and arcane magic is a brutal force banned in most places and responsible for the destruction of the land. Life is cheap, slavery is the law of the land, and enslaved warriors are made to fight in the arena for the entertainment of the tired and abused masses.

Quote from: Shasarak;1116984Which is one reason why the Realms is a better setting then Darksun, you need less niche rules.

So which one is it? FR is this bastion of universal adventure because any type of adventure you could possibly want can be played, or FR can't handle proper niche presentation?  You are still comparing apples to oranges and claiming that apples are better because we already have apples and apples don't have to be oranges.

Being supposedly adaptable in superficial ways to different things doesn't make a setting great, having an interesting and distinctive feeling and flavor does. And FR is as bland as a can of vegetables.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116932Ima have to check this out when I have the chance. This is the same podcast I mentioned in my last post, where they interviewed Troy Denning. Wasn't sure where it was back then, but this link helped me find them. Gonna post them below, cuz these are must-listen for any Dark Sun aficionados:

Troy Denning Interview Part 1
Troy Denning Interview Part 2

So according to Troy Denning Darksun came about as a way to combine Leather Bikinis and the Psionics Handbook which is a far more awesome idea then mine.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117002You're comparing apples to oranges and desperately missing the point.

Well if you could just mansplain your point to me we could have a discussion.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1116729Make Ravenloft the core setting of D&D. All retcons are the works of the higher powers!

Its also already a "Pick & Mix" setting.

YES!

Ravenloft was the best of the published settings...although I'd like to see someone make a full campaign setting book out of the "implied setting" of OD&D.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116932(snip) Troy Denning Interview Part 1
Troy Denning Interview Part 2 (snip)

I haven't listened to these two yet which is why I didn't quote TD. I hope these are as good as the ones with Tim Brown!

Quote from: tenbones;1116938(snip) I think some of the best stuff ever written for D&D in terms of how it should work in a kitchen-sink setting, stuff that really resonated with me (and continues to until today) was established during this era. Faiths and Avatars/Powers and Pantheon are great examples that pushed the Cleric class into Deity-specific orders with wonderful write-ups for Clerics, layfolk AND militant Paladin orders (if such existed). (snip)

Agreed.

The Faiths & Avatars trilogy actually brought me back to the Realms and to D&D. I always *despised* generic clerics plus Faiths & Avatars alone provides thousands of campaign and adventure hooks. They also did a great job of reconciling much of the mess the post-Ed Realms pastiche had become at that point... before the mess began again.

Quote from: Shasarak;1116959I would have imagined that Darksun is the worst place to boost Battlesystem.  When it is hard to keep an individual alive how are you going to have armies marching around enough to justify its use. (snip)

I believe that they discovered that during its development judging by the lack of attention that Battlesystem received during the DS product line. That said, the second published adventure (not including the one in the boxed set), Road to Urik, including some mass battles between the forces of two city states - I believe this was a nod to the War World plans. I think there may have been at least one other adventure that also used the BS rules but I could be wrong.

Mass battles in such a resource-less environment make very little sense.

Quote from: TJS;1116989If by 'better' you mean more suitable for default D&D then sure.

Dark Sun really does need its own system.

[heresy] Actually, I have found that 4E is almost ideal for Dark Sun. [/heresy]

Quote from: Shasarak;1116971Is Darksun better for playing Desert Survival then Forgotten Realms?  Well Darksun is Desert Survival 24/7 and on the other hand the Realms has the Anauroch Desert.  So do you want to be Camel riding Nomads fighting the Zhents or do you want to be Dune Beetle riding Psionic Half giants fighting cannibal halflings?

Anauroch is not where I would try and run Dark Sun in FR with its faux-Bedouin (which I do not use in my Realms): The Shaar Desolation from the 4E version of the Realms, however, is almost ideal, as is the Raurin and Plains of Purple Dust (Raurin and PoPD even have the right faux-real world civilisations).

But give me, as you put it, dune beetle-riding, psionic half-giants fighting cannibal halflings over a crappy ersatz attempt in the Realms any day!

I don't really have much positive to say about FR as a whole. The more I read about it the more boring I find it. BUT I still find FR extremely intertwined with D&D in my head. This is mainly because my first exposure to D&D(not rpgs in general but specifically D&D) was Baldurs Gate. A game I adored. Then BG2, Neverwinter Nights etc. And over the years I absorbed so much lore about it that it feels very familiar. And I guess this is the main strength of the setting. So much media exposure made it quite synonymous with D&D itself.

Even to me who loath many of its main aspects; especially boring generic merchant city-republics everywhere with very little defined culture and all the edition overhauls, novels etc.

If I would run it today I would probably go with 1ed/2ed and keep strictly to the Volo guides as main sources and ignore most other stuff.

Quote from: Zalman;1116875I'm still scratching my head as to why anyone thought D&D needed to include a "default" setting at all. (And of course using any previously existing setting is going to invoke shoehorning and/or gutting, given the wealth of legacy material from/for a variety of settings).

WotC uses the "default setting" to promote the Living Campaign. In the case of 5e, the living campaign is Forgotten Realms via Adventurer's League.
Why? People who play in living campaigns buy lots more stuff.

Quote from: tenbones;1116885You know... just go Greybox and you're Faerun is great.

I'd argue the vast majority of settings are best in the original box or book.

I've rarely seen a setting improved for actual play via the supplement mill or edition rehash.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1116930Oh, and the Neverwinter Campaign Setting is simply superb.

Agreed. I am not a FR fan and I greatly enjoyed the Neverwinter book for 4e. Got to play a short campaign, and I'd love to revisit.

Easily my favorite 4e setting material.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117002That's like saying that Star Wars is the best of all fantasy settings, cuz you get to play laser-sword wielding space wizards that can hop around planets with countless alien creatures and any type of environment.

I would love to see that movie!

I've done something like that with Gamma World, but I love how succinctly you put it. Your summation sounds like crazy fun.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1117016although I'd like to see someone make a full campaign setting book out of the "implied setting" of OD&D.

Have you seen the PDF that breaks down the OD&D implied setting? Very interesting reading and I've been thinking about running it at some point.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx-230B8tqxvMmFrNGJFU3hGNnM/edit

Dessert survival?! Mr Creosote?

Quote from: Shasarak;1117014Well if you could just mansplain your point to me we could have a discussion.

You mean like I did in the rest of my post right after the sentence you quoted? But of course you missed it, cuz it was the point.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1117027But give me, as you put it, dune beetle-riding, psionic half-giants fighting cannibal halflings over a crappy ersatz attempt in the Realms any day!

Seriously, why would I wanna play some lame generic camel riding nomad when I could play freaking cannibal halfling fighting half-giants with psionic powers, riding giant dune beetles across the desert landscape, with long legged elves sprinting marathons across the sands and bald, barrel chested dwarves building shit all day?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117045Seriously, why would I wanna play some lame generic camel riding nomad when I could play freaking cannibal halfling fighting half-giants with psionic powers, riding giant dune beetles across the desert landscape, with long legged elves sprinting marathons across the sands and bald, barrel chested dwarves building shit all day?

If my experiences with today's players are at all typical, players would choose to play a camel-riding vanilla human nomad in Dark Sun just for the weirdness factor of it (and they would instead play the cannibal halfling in the Forgotten Realms). I think it's because all players want their characters to be special, but some can't think past the surface of their character, so all of the "specialness" just piles up on it like too much makeup and they end up making characters that are far weirder than any NPCs can even hope to be.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1116930One of my favourite personal heresies is that I love the 4E version of the Realms because it upset everything enough that I feel much better about putting my own stamp on the Realms that I did before. (My primary heresy is that 4E remains my favourite RPG.) It's the new Grey Box for me - even if it is no longer new. Oh, and the Neverwinter Campaign Setting is simply superb.

Even though I tried to get into 4e FR but found it too contrived and completely unnecessary, I still have to agree that the Neverwinter book is great. I have a hard time coming up a specific FR setting book I would call better regardless of edition. For me it is definitely the best setting book wizbro has ever done.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1117029WotC uses the "default setting" to promote the Living Campaign. In the case of 5e, the living campaign is Forgotten Realms via Adventurer's League.
Why? People who play in living campaigns buy lots more stuff.

Sure that makes sense, not "need" but "greed", as it were. But then I'm left scratching my head as to why anyone who doesn't play in Adventurer's League gives a hoot as which setting is used there.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1117048If my experiences with today's players are at all typical, players would choose to play a camel-riding vanilla human nomad in Dark Sun just for the weirdness factor of it (and they would instead play the cannibal halfling in the Forgotten Realms). I think it's because all players want their characters to be special, but some can't think past the surface of their character, so all of the "specialness" just piles up on it like too much makeup and they end up making characters that are far weirder than any NPCs can even hope to be.

I'm not sure it works the other way around. What's commonplace for us (given our real world perspective) would still be commonplace and ordinary for us even if it wasn't common in the game world's context. I think that a lot of people don't even consider the setting and come into it from a detached "this is fantasy!" perspective that doesn't take world immersion and internal consistency into account. And a lot of times this perspective tends to be informed by whatever type of cool art they saw last, that the player liked and wanted to play a character like that.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117044You mean like I did in the rest of my post right after the sentence you quoted? But of course you missed it, cuz it was the point.

Well I see the bit about me missing the point, then the bit about Star Wars and the bit about how Dark Sun is not Desert Survival it is Dessert Survival.

Am I with you so far?