RPG a Day 2015 Challenge – Day 21

Final entry of favorites week, setting this time around. #RPGaDay2015 keeps going strong, send me links to you entries or blogs on the subject so I can share them! On with the show…

Day 21 – Favorite RPG setting

The obvious choice would be my homebrewed world, but since you have no point of reference you would have to just take my world for how awesome it is! But that’s cheating; let me break it down by genre…

For fantasy, and this should be no surprise to regular readers, it’s the D&D Known World, better known as Mystara. From the map in the D&D Expert set to the Gazetteer series, it’s still my favorite D&D setting!

Sci-fi, really sci-fantasy, I just love the world of Fading Suns. Even if I’ve never played it, it just captures my fancy. I have the Victory Point books, the D20 books, but I think Stars Without Number might handle it really well!

My favorite horror setting, Masque of the Red Death, originally for AD&D 2^nd edition Ravenloft, later adapted to D&D 3^rd edition. A close seconds is Cthulhu by Gaslight. My favorite steampunk (before there was such a thing) is Space 1889. You can see a pattern here, lots of love for the Victoria era.

Favorite supers setting Legion of Superheroes, and there have sadly been too few sourcebooks for this series, only three that I know of, for the old Mayfair’s DC game. I own two of the three and sadly never got the adventure. Look at the cover below…

What’s your favorite RPG setting? Looking forward to your comments, have a great Friday! See you all tomorrow.

10 comments

Johnkzin August 21, 2015 14:58

I get you’ll see my answer coming from a mile away:

The Mutant Chronicles.

And, funny you should mention Space 1889. I just got my GM’s screen from their recent KS revival. And I’m sort of working on a mash-up of The Mutant Chronicles, Space 1889, and Spelljammer.

Sunglar August 21, 2015 15:19

Good taste sir! That mash-up sounds terrific…

gened5 August 21, 2015 15:20

My favorite settings are as follows:

-Fantasy: Mystara, Thieves’ World, Dragonlance, and Mouse Guard, plus my long-running “Vanished Lands” homebrew campaign setting

-Steampunk: Castle Falkenstein and Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death, plus a friend’s GURPS “Arth” and my own “Gaslight Grimoire”

-Espionage/pulp: Top Secret: SI, James Bond, Indiana Jones

-Modern supernatural/horror: The (FATE-based) Dresden Files, some of the (Storyteller) World of Darkness

-Superheroes: The DC universe, San Angelo for Champions, and my world of the “Societe de Justice Internationale (S.J.I.)”

-Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk 2020 (can that be only five years away now?!), Paranoia, Shadowrun

-Time/dimensional travel: Doctor Who, GURPS Infinite Worlds, some Palladium Rifts, and a “Voyagers II” game I co-ran with friends

-Space opera: Star Frontiers, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica (classic), Traveller (any edition/era), Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG1, and my “Vortex” universe

Of all of these, I’d have to say that Mystara had the most influence on me, since it was the first setting I explored as a role-player and that inspired me to build my own as a Game Master.

Sunglar August 23, 2015 19:49

gened5, nice list, good to see all the Mystara love. Do you know there is a fan conversion of Mystara to D&D 5th edition being shared in the Mystara Reborn FB group?

Never played Castle Falkenstein, and I didn’t buy it… 🙁
I did look it over once when I worked at the FLGS.

gened5 August 23, 2015 20:56

I’ll have to look for that FB Mystara group — thanks! There are lots of decent steampunk games, but Falkenstein was stylish and did a nice job of bringing fantasy and alternate history together…..

Voidman August 21, 2015 16:24

It’s actually quite difficult to come out with a limited list 😉

In no specific order:

• Fantasy
Warhammer (The Old World) – dark, doomed, late medieval / early renaissance, low magic.
or
Forgotten Realms – the Grey Box era – pre Avatar – eclectic fantasy – familiar themes and locales.

• Science-fantasy
Ninth World – Numenera – Mystery and weirdness with a touch of post-apocalypse.

• Quasi-historical fantasy – this is hard
Rokugan – L5R – let’s face it, it’s feudal Japan – samurai!
Qin – Ancient China as presented in WuXIa films – martial arts
7th Seas – pirates & musketeers, swashbuckling adventures of high seas, swordplay & intrigue

• Hard SF
Gurps Transhuman Space (or newer Eclipse Phase) – posthumanism, Solar system colonized, no FTL, cyberpunk in space

• Space Opera
Star Wars – the WEG D6 variety
(but StarTrek is soooo close 😉 )

• Cyberpunk
Shadowrun – everything that cyberpunk does and more

• Horror
Cthulhu Mythos or Kult – depending if I want modern or Levecraftian horror

• Steampunk
Castle Falkenstein – stylish and rich setting that can capture themes ranging from 17/18th century Europe to (weird) Wild West
Settings that made me: Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, L5R and most recently Numenera.

Sunglar August 23, 2015 19:51

Star Ward D6 was indeed a terrific system last year on #RPGaDay I (which I did not post here int he blog) I gushed about it… Can you believe I’ve never played L5R? And I have many friends who play it… Got to get to that. That and some Wild West gaming. Thanks for the comment.

johnkzin August 23, 2015 23:58

I hesitate to call Castle Falkenstein “steampunk”. It is steampunk in the same way that “the six million Dollar man” is cyberpunk. It lays some of the foundations of a genre that didn’t formally exist yet… But it isn’t really part of that genre. It’s really just clockwork and magical technology, but applied plausibly and without much in the extremes, to our history. Steampunk as an actual genre seems a LOT more extreme and stylized. In the same way that cyberpunk is a LOT more stylized and extreme than any version of “the six million dollar man” is/was.

Sunglar August 24, 2015 17:05

You say the Six Million Dollar Man was not cyberpunk? Heretic!

LOL, loved the comparison, you made my Monday!

Sunglar August 24, 2015 17:14

gened5 you can find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mystara.reborn/

RPG a Day 2015 Challenge – Day 20

RPG a Day 2015 Challenge – Day 22

Related Posts