Broadly, yes, homebrew all the way. Why let somebody else do your imagining for you? To paraphrase Gary Gygax.

That said, some settings are just too good not to use. Planescape and Dark Sun are the only two that spring to mind.

i always loved the low-magic, gritty Howard-like fantasy world of my own imaginings.  for me, that's fantasy; no Elminster, no Dragon Lances, and no Realms of Mary-Sue.  someone else's fantasy world is not mine.  (mine's cooler) haha  

kidding aside, like i did with the Dead, i think it's kinda cool to make the "campaign map" a big blank sheet of paper, do the "large continent/land mass that extends off one or more sides"-shape, and then fill it in as we play.  maybe one of the players has a cool idea about where the "frozen wastes" are, so we add them in there.  not so much touchy-feely-story-gamey, cause ultimately i'm the DM, but i want the players to have some sense of "belonging" and ownership of the place.

that said, i loved the first version of Dark Sun, and would pretty much play that again as-is.  Glorantha is also cool, as it fits my aesthetic preferences. i'm not sure anyone who didn't exclusively run the modules played in the same Gamma World, but i'm sweet on that place, too.

I rarely do homebrew fantasy settings; usually I take a published setting and do what I need to make it my own.  In some cases (like the Forgotten Realms) that involves a lot of tinkering, in others (like Mystara) practically none at all.

RPGPundit

I like settings, and I rarely use a homebrew. I've run Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Planescape and Eberron. I can't wait to get my Pathfinder campaign started in Golarion, and I have great plans for Spelljammer.

Then there are games that are not D&D, and for most of them, the default setting is the way I go. Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings, Fading Suns, Exalted...

Yeah. I like settings. Sure, they get adapted a bit for my style, bent around here and there to accommodate the story, and often changed during the course of the campaign. For instance, I maintain a certain continuity in the Forgotten Realms through all my campaigns, and little changes tend to accumulate - the adventurers build a keep to guard this place here, some guys burn down the lord's manor over there, and so forth.

I have used and still use official settings, but very rarely as written. I've always deleted, altered and added cultures, cities, timelines, races, classes... and that was _before_ the players stepped in and put their mark on it by slaying the king of Aquilonia to become kings of Aquilonia themselves, so I guess I'd shock everyone who loves the setting in question.

I've run in Greyhawk before, but that's about it.  I have lots of published setting material for various games, but use them as idea mines for my own games.  I just enjoy making maps and figuring out how people get along in the landscapes that result.

I use some published settings: Ravenloft, 7th Sea's Thea, Children of the Sun's setting (of which I forget the name), Promised Sands' T'nah, GURPS Technomancer, and GURPS Yrth.  

However, there are some which I ignore.  Deadlands comes to mind first (since I'm running it right now), and I don't use any of its setting material.  I just set the game in the Wild West (not the real one, but the Spaghetti Western kind) and make it Weird.  In C&C I use homebrews.

Love me some good settings. I also like to play in them, but if not sometimes even just reading them is fun. What I like:

Birthright
Greyhawk
Harn
Freeport
Dark Sun
Dark Matter
Roma Imperius
Earthdawn
50 Fathoms
Miami Nights
Wonderland

Plus lots more I'm not remembering off the top of my head. Great reading and, if I could find/make games, great gaming. As has already been said, I can work out my imagination in the details.

I'm getting set to run a Star Wars Saga ed. campaign so obviously the setting is part and parcel.  However I've made it clear that only the six movies will be considered setting canon.  All the Expanded Universe stuff will be used as inspiration if needed and even then its subject to my creative whims.

I steal settings all the time but I do it from novels. So I am working on a game based on the 'Before they were hanged' series by Joe Abercrombie and have been looking at Gaiman's stuff , Sandman, Stardust, Neverwhere with the aim to seeing if I can put a homebrew system together.  
The advantage of settings in novels is that most of the players are familiar with them. They have an idea of who the Murgols are or the Dwarves under the mountain or the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.
I seldom use the heroes from the novels.
I bought the 1e AD&D Greyhawk hardback but only for the spell lists. I have played in Ravenloft aside from that we are way to lazy to use offical settings.

Some games in my collection (D&D, True20) cry out for personalised settings. Others (Exalted, WFRP) practically beg to be used as written. For me it's largely a question of how well the mechanics mesh with the assumptions of the world they represent.

The official settings I like best are:

Greyhawk - pre-From the Ashes.
Cerilia - the Birthright setting
al-Qadim - one of the best settings ever done for D&D. It broke away from the standard European-style setting TSR had been doing for so long.
Red Steel - A fairly odd setting for D&D which had its own atmosphere that was reminiscent of everything from swashbuckling pirate adventure to Lovecraft-tinged horror.
Atlantis - the setting for Bard Games' Arcanum. The Lexicon covered, literally, the whole planet, and drew from just about every culture.
The Imperium - Traveller's sprawling setting could contain just about anything.
The galaxy of Expendables - OK, not much to it, but it had a distinct feel. The Company was attempting to build its own empire from the ruins of a long-dead interstellar civilization. Plus, it had a dash of humor, which is too sorely needed.
Warhammer - Warhammer's setting is pretty durned cool. Seems like a bog-standard fantasy world at first glance, but the incursion of pure chaos into it gives it a feel something like Lovecraft, but a Lovecraft infused with Robert E. Howard action and Python-esque lunacy.
Arthur's Britain - Pendragon's world is one in which honor and passion are not just concepts to which to aspire, but are almost tangible elements.
Tharkold - a realm from TORG. Not the actual realm that appeared on Earth to steal away possibility energy, but the home world of the technodemons and the humans that call themselves The Race because a millennia-long war with the demons has eradicated any differences humans had among themselves. The setting deserved more coverage beyond what little could be gleaned about it from the Tharkold realm book and its attendant bestiary.

For most games, I use the majority of it's setting. I throw out all the bits and peices I don't like/don't fit in my campaign. I also change a few things here and there to keep my setting whores guessing

I also completely homebrew a setting or two...for certain games

Besides Pendragon and Ringworld, the only official settings I use are my own, in which case official settings == homebrew settings.

-clash

Quote from: Serious PaulI know we once had a thread about who used what setting around here, but Hackmastergeneral and Ceasar Slaad's posts in another thread got me thinking. How many people use the settings? Is it a lot?

So what do you think? What other systems have settings besides D&D?

My current favorite setting is Eberron, Followed by Forgotten Realms.

I also endorse Bard Games Atlantis. Most excellent sourcebook for a campaign, simply loaded with detail. Don't get to GM or Play it often though, it would be a snap to put a game together for just about any version of D&D.

I GM two homebrew campaign settings, though I have not run a game with this, or did any significant work on this in four or five years now. Just not enough time, it seems. Maybe something to get back to.