So which one was it, out of all the ones they made?  Which was the worst piece of shit in the bunch?
 
Blackmoor?
Gygax-era Greyhawk?
Tekumel?
Mystara?
Kara-tur?
Dragonlance?
Forgotten Realms?
Ravenloft?
2e-era "From the Ashes" Greyhawk?
Al-qadim?
Hollow World?
Dark Sun?
Spelljammer?
Planescape?
Birthright?

I'm sure there's a few I'm missing in that list.  Say which one you thought was a total waste of paper that the designers should be shot for having written.

RPGPundit

Kara-Tur always struck me as unpardonably boring.  Asian fantasy has tons of potential, but the setting felt like it was written by folks who had only seen a handful of ninja movies.  No depth there at all.

Quote from: RPGPundit;524197So which one was it, out of all the ones they made?  Which was the worst piece of shit in the bunch?
 
Blackmoor?
Gygax-era Greyhawk?
Tekumel?
Mystara?
Kara-tur?
Dragonlance?
Forgotten Realms?
Ravenloft?
2e-era "From the Ashes" Greyhawk?
Al-qadim?
Hollow World?
Dark Sun?
Spelljammer?
Planescape?
Birthright?

I'm sure there's a few I'm missing in that list.  Say which one you thought was a total waste of paper that the designers should be shot for having written.

RPGPundit

Most of the settings i played extensively, i enjoyed. I played plenty of Ravenloft, Planescape, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Mystara, and Birthright. The one that never thrilled me was Kara-Tur for some reason. Masque of the Red Death, which was a cool idea IMO, wasn't executed as well as it could have been (particularly the supplements--a bit on the dry side). So even though there are aspects of it i enjoyed, and i even ran a few good campaigns using it, i think the books themselves were weaker than they could have been. I liked Al Qadim, but didn't play it as much as the others (just hard to get players on board-which may say something about the setting). Also Spelljammer was kind of cool, but i had something of a love-hate relationship with it. We had great spelljammer campaigns, but it was always the one i was least excited to begin.

Quote from: misterguignol;524198Kara-Tur always struck me as unpardonably boring.  Asian fantasy has tons of potential, but the setting felt like it was written by folks who had only seen a handful of ninja movies.  No depth there at all.

The modules were not very impressive either as I recall.

I think i could happily run a game in any of them tbh. More options = good.

TSR's settings were mostly guilty of being horribly boring rather than outright bad. Even their attempts at darker fantasy, like Greyhawk in From the Ashes and Birthright felt flat. One time, I thought Birthright was the worst of the bunch because that was where I gave up on official 2e products, but it was just the last straw.

All right, let me choose one: Dark Sun 2nd edition. It took the best setting TSR staff created and ruined it with a series of changes that destroyed the ideas that made it such a success in the first place.

Maybe not a total waste of paper, but in terms of usability, the 3E/3.5E Forgotten Realms was absolutely horrible with groups of players that were FR "canon lawyers".

Maztica was pretty piss poor from what i remember.

The 3/3.5e Forgotten realms books were awesome for world info but yeah they sucked ruleswise.

Quote from: Melan;524206TSR's settings were mostly guilty of being horribly boring rather than outright bad. Even their attempts at darker fantasy, like Greyhawk in From the Ashes and Birthright felt flat. One time, I thought Birthright was the worst of the bunch because that was where I gave up on official 2e products, but it was just the last straw.

All right, let me choose one: Dark Sun 2nd edition. It took the best setting TSR staff created and ruined it with a series of changes that destroyed the ideas that made it such a success in the first place.

I never understand this opinion. To me Birthright is a fantastic setting that takes the near gonzo-ness of the default D&D setting (expressed through it's rules and monster books) and gives it reason and purpose. It added a cool dimension to the game through the mass combat rules and blood rules, and contains LOADS of potential for adventure and gaming, from the level of local/commoner style all the way up to rulers/world-changing style. As always, I'm not knocking your opinion, and you're, of course, entitled to it. Just don't understand it

I was never a fan of Dragonlance as a setting. The novels just made it too meta-plotish. It's the same reason I don't like gaming in Star Wars or LotR most of the time. However, I'm not sure I would label it the way Pundit is asking.

I wouldn't really paint any of TSR's setting with that brush personally. I do agree that they can be mildly bland, but I've never minded that, and IMO the blandness can actually potentially make them more useful as RPG products because then the GM and players can bring their own awesome, like my groups did with Birthright, Dark Sun (the least bland, hand down) and Greyhawk.

Quote from: ggroy;524208Maybe not a total waste of paper, but in terms of usability, the 3E/3.5E Forgotten Realms was absolutely horrible with groups of players that were FR "canon lawyers".

Yeah, it might have been the canon lawyer I played with, but I ended up having a really bad gut reaction to any mention of Forgotten Realms. Anytime I come across a major city with super perfect magical defense mechanisms, I also wonder how the heck they convinced any magic-users(or even a group of them) to spend the XP to make those things. Some of the things I'd imagine would take even a group of epic-level wizards back to level 1. It's just unreal, and doesn't gel with the 3e magic item creation rules at all.

Sigmund: I see it as a case of great concept, shoddy execution. They had something going, but the writing in the books is so bland, the initially interesting ideas so neutered it felt like a colossal disappointment. (From what I've read, TSR's self-censorship considerably toned down the setting from the original submission.)

I don't deny there is a good deal of subjectivity involved in my perspective. Birthright was really the last in a series of TSR products that disappointed me and made me quit gaming. There were worse offenders, BR just happened to be the last.

SpellJammer is kind of neat (I have the original boxed set) but in some ways it strikes me as a missed opportunity. The art is made of suck and they really should have avoided using the typical fantasy races. The latter point could probably be argued for dark sun as well, but the re-imagining of the races helps alleviate the samey-samey problem (except maybe in the case of elves, who should just have been jettisoned from DS, imo). Furthermore, the presentation of DS could have been better, much better. it's still really cool. Aside from Darlele's early GH map, that's all the experience I have with TSR settings.

Quote from: Melan;524206All right, let me choose one: Dark Sun 2nd edition. It took the best setting TSR staff created and ruined it with a series of changes that destroyed the ideas that made it such a success in the first place.

I was going to say Kara-Tur, but I think you're right: Not only did it destroy the setting, but it pushed the idea that the novels were more important than the game.

Dragonlance. All of the others, I can see how to remove or play down the bad bits and get to the good ideas at their core. Dragonlance, on the other hand, has so many annoying comic relief elements and bad plot choices baked right into it's design that it would be more effort to ignore or rewrite them than it would be to start with a blank slate. Even Dark Sun makes it easier for you to ignore all the metaplot stuff if it's not to your taste.

Dragonlance should have been awesome. Instead, TSR saddled it with all kinds of odd rules and made it suck.