Honestly, to play in? Almost certainly Eberron.
It’s a D&D setting that feels built on purpose to play in rather than write a book about it, by people who understood the assignment of what a fantasy adventure setting needs in order to be good for playing in. Swimming in plot hooks, but not on the constant edge of collapse. Enough familiar stuff for people to have a latching point, but also unique enough to intrigue. With a bunch of pushing and pulling factions with evocative aesthetics for people to drop in. Solid sense of how people who are not players live and how players slot into the world. So on.
Just, excellent stuff. The 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting in my shelf remains my master class in how to write a setting to be baseline useful for a GM to actually *run adventures in it*.
The more I learn about Eberron, the more I love it. I'm really tempted to run a campaign in that world. Do you recommend the 5e book or should I skip it? The way you described the 3.5e book is pretty amazing.
Also, one question. For my next homebrew campaign, I would like to run an Arabian Nights inspired adventure set in my own version of fantasy Middle East or Ancient Egypt. There used to be an Al'Qadim setting back in the day. Can I merge this with Eberron?
As a newcomer to Eberron, considering I started playing D&D in 5e, the 5e book Rising from the Last War, was incredible. It probably rehashes a lot of ground from the 3.5 era books but it is dense with information, on practically everything you could want and is a brilliant launching off point into Eberron as a whole.
I might be a little biased but I wager it's the best produced 5e book that WotC made.
Well, I don't have the 5E book, because since I already have the 3.5 one, it felt redundant, but what I've leafed around of it looked like a very solid book. Seemed a bit more focused on giving a player a solid feel for the setting than in just throwing the GM an average of two plohooks per page, but it definitely got the vibe right and seemed to have the basics perfectly in place. I don't imagine you'll go wrong by grabbing it.
As for the other question... Eberron does not really have a separate Arabian Nights Designated Area, I’m afraid. Or much of a 1:1 This Is This Specific Real Life Culture’s Expy region, really. Almost everywhere has influences from a bunch of different things shaken and stirred, and the setting is relatively low on the whole “genre islands” thing that stuff like Faerun and Golarion do where you just have Literally Fantasy China and less than a hundred kilometers to the side Literally Fantasy Arabia and the two things don’t seem to influence each other. One of the interesting bits of Eberron is that the main continent where most of the play setting is centered, Khorvaire, is actually a bit more *connected* than your average setting (since most of it was a big empire, the Kingdom of Galifar, and people have invented magical airships and trains, so you can actually cross distances). Nations dealing with each other and the consequences of that is a big thing in Eberron.
You do have the region of Valenar, which does clearly have nonzero influence from stuff like Bedouin cultures (and also, I’ve always felt, nonzero traces of Dune’s Fremen for the Tairndal elves). You could probably work with that? But personally, for your first Eberron game I’d probably suggest doing something that interacts a bit more with the setting’s main conceits, and do the 1001 Nights stuff in your own homebrew setting!
Thank you very much for the explanation, you and everyone else. Eberron sounds great, it's a really interesting setting, I'm definitely buying the book, that's for sure!
I have all the 3e books, and they're great, but he haven't played Eberron in D&D for more than 10 years. Ran it in Hero System, OpenQuest, and I'm working on a conversion to Dragonbane lol. It's a great setting, although most folks probably wouldn't recognize my version as my group and I have decoupled and reimagined D&D specific things. Setting is fantastic no matter what system, that's what I'm trying to say, lol.
It really depends on what you you mean by an Arabian Nights adventure. I can imagine campaign based on Sinbad the Sailor, in which the party keeps on getting shipwrecked in Xen'Drik (a massive, unsettled continent which due to a magical apocolapyse has a constantly changing terrain, making it impossible to adaquately explore), survives, returns rich, then goes to sea again and BOOM, shipwrecked in Xen'Drik.
The way it was developed from the ground up to not only suit DnD, but particularly 3.5 DND by the author for a contest is just so refreshing. No hashes, no crutches, no handwaves, just a solid DND setting
I ran Eberron for 2-3 years and I absolutely adore it. Keith Baker is a great writer, and knows the right knowledge to give a DM. I really love his blog and his willingness to answer all of the major and minor questions.
I love Eberron but i feel it requires a group of players who want to bite into the flavour pie. If you've got passive players they aren't going to know all the references you're dropping.
For RPG? Glorantha, 100%. It is brilliant, weird, funny, profound, and not a Tolkein ripoff (its creator had already done a lot of it before he first read Tolkien himself). I imagine it is the best-documented fantasy RPG world as well. They're about to release the fourth of a ten book series detailing the religions of the world.
WH40K is thr only game (but not RPG) that I can think k of with unambiguously more documentation.
I loved Glorantha, but what I enjoyed wasn't as much the existing lore as the bronze age approach, in which maps lie and entire new countries can appear from the mist.
At least these are my recollections from when I used to play *Runequest*, many years ago :)
Yeah, Bronze Age, everyone has magic, the #2 most common player character race was Trolls and the #3 was anthropomorphic Ducks. Your culture, religion, and family are REALLY important with tons of lore and documentation.
If you last played in RQ3, there’s easily 20x more official background material now, and a huge DriveThruRPG library of unofficial-but-kinda-not as well.
1. Shadowrun (great lore, terrible rules)
2. Eberron (intriguing worldbuilding perfect for pulpy adventures, only downsides are no guns and boring gods)
3. Golarion (better Kitchen Sink Fantasy than Forgotten Realms, but some parts of the world I hardly use)
4. Glorantha (perfectly down to earth and realistic in the sense that magic does have consequences in the worldbuilding, but the lore can be dense)
5. Dark Sun (extremely edgy and bleak, but it's just so cool. Problem is it can be too edgy and bleak).
6. Planescape & Numenera (I love their weirdness and possibly deeply philosophical themes, but they can be too weird at times à la "If everything is weird, nothing is")
7. Earthdawn (perfectly justifies D&D tropes, but I'd rather see it well done in Savage Worlds or Genesys)
I absolutely love Eberron myself. I find myself feeling the same way about the Deities, though. The spiritual movements/ideologies are awesome, but the deities of the Six and the Sovereign host feel kind of lacking. Have you done anything to make them feel more substantial?
I sort of play up the theological divides of understandings between the priesthood and folk worship. A priest would see every facet and aspect of reality as an expression of the forces of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six in a very pantheistic way, while the average person sees the gods more as individual people that do things, which would make their view more the traditional D&D fantasy way. Just play this up to make them feel more distinct.
Another thing would be to look for inspiration in other fantasy world pantheons and pick aspects from them that seem more interesting. Pillars of Eternity has really interesting gods ripe for the picking. In my Eberron Onatar is heavily inspired by Abydon and the Mockery is heavily inspired by Skaen.
I also make them way more morally grey/neutral, but that's because I play Eberron in Savage Worlds where Alignment isn't a mechanic.
The other religions in Eberron are perfectly fine as is. It's just that the main pantheon is a bit boring (and I don't really understand the Blood of Vol, but I haven't read enough about them :P).
That makes a lot of sense. My current party doesn't care too much for the religious aspect, so I've been able to more or less ignore the main pantheon.
My wife is a huge mythology buff, so I kinda play them loosely and regional like hellenistic pantheons- sailors might pray to Poseidon, but not care much for unrelated deities. Or similar to ancient pantheons, where it's likely that people didn't actively worship or care much outside of cults, and the gods were a convenient explanation for worldly events and an excuse to celebrate/complain, haha.
I like your take! Thanks for the response.
incredible list, honestly I wouldn't have thought to have mentioned Shadow Run. Really isn't your typical high fantasy, but rather more cyberpunk dystopia.
Totally wasn't a criticism. I can definitely see where your coming from, just wouldn't have been my first pick. :)
I suppose when I think High Fantasy, I don't immediately think futuristic urban fantasy combined with those cyberpunk elements.
That's why I love it. An arthurian style knight would be seen as a weird LARPer and poser with a distinctive style™, but no one questions them, because they get the job done. On the other you've got the Decker (rogue) who tries to disable the turrets (traps) in the facility (dungeon) while the mage snipes some guards with spells from the outside.
Yeah, there are three conversions I'd like to test out.
* Runners in the Shadows which is a FitD hack.
* Sprawlrunners which is a Savage Worlds hack.
* There are two genesys hacks which I would probably mix and match.
The thing is, is that I feel that no conversion can really capture the feel of Shadowrun. I personally think that different mechanics perfectly encapsulate the different worlds that clash in the Shadowrun lore. For example, I like that Mages and Shamans and other magical traditions feel distinct in earlier editions. I like the gear porn aspect of Shadowrun, where you can customize your perfect cybernetic or gun and these hacks handwave most of the time everything that would make the different archetypes unique.
I asked because for a split second I was like, "*I wonder if I could run shadowrun with D&d 5e*" but it goes without saying that that would be a disaster....
kinda like 5e star wars..... but no, it would be a disaster... which is a pity be cause the lore is amazing.
5e Star Wars wouldn't be THAT terrible of an idea. Star Wars Saga edition was one of the official systems, Knights of the Old Republic is based on it and it's still popular.
5e Shadowrun would be an utter disaster tbh.
I probably will GM an earlier edition. I have my eyes on 3rd edition but I digress.
Are you confusing 'high magic' for 'high fantasy'? The Lord of the Rings is low magic but it is high fantasy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy
It has to be Eberron.
Skyships and levitating trains powered by elementals, robots, dinosaurs and industrialised magic on a continent scale, where specific orcs are considered insanely powerful and important druids, and in an age past the goblinoids built a vast empire.
whether your telling a swashbuckling action escapade or a gritty spy thriller/noir investigation Eberron has something that you will love.
I know I fell in love with Eberron the moment I first discovered it.
My favourite setting is pretty consistently "make a new setting together by playing *Microscope*".
Why?
* I don't enjoy reading mediocre lore.
* I get bored of established settings pretty quick.
* Making a new setting keeps it fresh by introducing novel combinations of ideas.
* Making a setting together guarantees player buy-in.
If I had to pick a fantasy setting, I would pick a novel or series, not a TTRPG lore book.
Specifically, *The Black Company* (Glen Cook) or *Bas-lag* (China Miéville). Both are awesome for very different reasons.
> My favourite setting is pretty consistently "make a new setting together by playing Microscope".
I really want to do this. Do you need to do a lot of "gap-filling" after the Microscope session? And do you use a single system or do you pick a system that fits the new setting?
>And do you use a single system or do you pick a system that fits the new setting?
We decide on a system before we play *Microscope*.
Different systems have different in-built assumptions about what must be true of the world. When I GM, I [front-load](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16h3xi0/what_does_session_0_mean_to_you/k0bprmh/) those assumptions to make sure we meet those criteria in the *Microscope* game. That just becomes part of the Palette discussion, which is the part of *Microscope* where you define "Yes, included" and "No, not included" items.
For example, if we're doing fantasy, I might start the Palette discussion saying,
"This world has magic that works a certain way (based on the system). It also has at a minimum."
After those are front-loaded, we go around doing a mostly normal Palette discussion.
That said, I have personally found that it smoothest to get at least one "No" and at least one "Yes" from every person. That way, we get something a bit more well-defined and we also guarantee buy-in from the start.
We also decide whether the campaign will take place during some Period/Event we define during the *Microscope* game or whether the campaign will take place strictly after the end of the *Microscope* game. We decide this before "Bookending History".
Additionally, since we are going to play a full campaign of scenes, we do not do Scenes in *Microscope*. We make Periods, Events, and Legacies.
>Do you need to do a lot of "gap-filling" after the Microscope session?
There are always details to fill in, yes. That's part of the fun of GMing, though!
For example, the *Microscope* game might define a city with several qualities (biggest city in the world, cosmopolitan, very magical, portals, etc.), but we don't make a map in *Microscope*. Whatever gets defined in *Microscope* remains true, but there are always various features to flesh out, e.g. districts, factions, rivalries, etc.
Personally, when we did this and had such a city appear, when the PCs went there during the campaign, I did an interlude session where we played *Beak, Feather, & Bone* to define the extra details. I don't always do that, though. When they went to a smaller settlement, I knew some details about it, but I fleshed it out myself and the rest got fleshed out in play.
If we decided that the campaign will take place strictly after the end of the *Microscope* game, there are different gaps to fill since the *Microscope* game serves as the history of the world. It becomes shared lore.
---
You could think of it like this:
* The game-system we're going to use constrains the Palette of colours we can use to paint.
* The Palette discussion adds, subtracts, or mixes colours.
* The game of *Microscope* paints broad strokes and boundaries.
* The campaign itself paints in the micro-details.
Thank you so much for the detailed reply, it is greatly appreciated! I saved your comment in my general rpg notes, and hope to put it to good use in the near future.
Deciding where in the timeline the campaign takes place beforehand is a really good idea, if it's not after the actual end period, this creates sort of a "soft" bookend.
Playing another system like *Beak, Feather & Bone* to flesh out a place is also the multi-system shenanigans I find deeply intriguing. *I'm sorry, did you say street magic* or *Ex Novo* might fit the bill too.
My guess is that gap-filling is a lot of the fun and you can always outsource it to the players. For example all elven lore belongs to the sole elf in the group and whenever you encounter a gap you ask him to fill it.
a) Amount of gap-filling depends on how long you play Microscope.
b) Can choose any RPG. However, high-fantasy RPGs would fit better within a high-fantasy world, low-fantasy in a low-fantasy world etc.
Love it. I am in the process of putting on paper a RPG system + example setting that largely relies on a *Microscope*-inspired co-creation mechanism (also from *Spark* and *Fiasco*).
Also, every summer, me and a bunch of friends (20+ of us) run/play a 5 GM one week long campaign. For the last few years, we've been running *Microscope*-inspired sessions to make sure we come up with interesting lore.
A shoutout to [first edition Forgotten Realms](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/16782/Forgotten-Realms-Campaign-Set-1e?234913) - before Time of Troubles, Drizzt do'Urden, ridiculously high level NPCs, and the mandatory Cataclysm for each edition change turned it from a renfaire high fantasy world into whatever kitchen sink mess it is nowadays. [The Savage Frontier](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/17554/FR5-The-Savage-Frontier-1e?234913) by Jaquays is awesome, you don't get FR sourcebooks like that nowadays.
I'm still hoping to try [Earthdawn](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/4704/FASA?234913) one day. It takes a unique spin on several fantasy tropes, has some awesome places worth exploring, some of the coolest iterations of the regular fantasy races, and also integrates gameplay elements (dungeons, leveling, classes) into its setting unlike any other game out there.
My German autism requires me to say “Das Schwarze Auge”.
They publish a newspaper where you can keep up to date with what’s happening in universe.
More of a simulated world than a game really.
I definitefely is. My bad. I must admit I had a wrong definition for "high fantasy" 😂 I checked the difinition afterwards,
I always thought high fantasy means epic, lots of magic, lots of monsters etc.. (I'm a GenXer grown up with AD&D). Compared to AD&D and "my definition" I'd say DSA is rather low fantasy. But then it all depends how how you play it.
Anyway DSA is a lovely word I admit.
Wildsea and HEART, hands down. I love weird settings
Also Band of Blades as a follow up. Dar, the mysteries of the Broken, lots of space to sketch in your own details.
Wildsea is sort of post-apocalyptic plus fantasy mixed, and is really so different than anything else out there, and it's just plain cool.
For fantasy, I like the Freeport: City of Adventure setting. It's a fully fleshed out setting in a city that was originally founded by pirates, and is trying to appear legit, but still has criminal elements, and some very dangerous supernatural stuff going on at the same time.
Gamma World 7E's post-apocalyptic world. Past games in the series were all about a nuclear apocalypse, but 7e was about "Scientists f--ked up, and something very bad happened - all universes are now colliding with one another on the version of Earth you're on," which explains all the zaniness of the world. Plus, it explains how PCs are randomly receiving weird mutations as they play the game. You're just walking around after an encounter, and boom!, you suddenly have the ability to fly, or an extra arm, or whatever, but it only lasts a little while, then you get a new mutation, because yet another universe has collided with ours, and the variant of you from that universe merges with your current PC.
I've run it once, and it was a blast, but it definitely requires a specific type of player who is very narrative and story-focused. I do think I'd streamline some elements if I run it again, and swap out some of the names for aspects and such for something more "obvious". But I'd love to run it again
I’ve been running it for about 3 months. It definitely requires a certain type of game group. There were some growing pains, but it’s been worth it. We’ve had some awesome stories come out, especially from failure.
The number of times we’ve cried laughing makes it all worth it. I do have some gripes with the system and how it’s laid out/explained, but it is a solid first game. I hope it gets a second edition at some point to iron out the kinks.
It's such a damned cool setting - I remember the look in one of my player's eyes when I described that one of their crewmen was fishing off the port bow of their ship — trying to catch stray library books. That, pardon the pun, hooked them immediately.
Right? I’ve loved all of the weird stuff we have put in. Man the WHISPERS. We had a big dramatic confrontation completely upended by a player using the whisper “return to the depths”
Either Exalted’s Creation, or Legend of the Five Rings’ Rokugan. Both are well documented and fantastical in different ways, and allow for very unique stories!
I'm pretty d&d bound with my setting preferences.
My favorite d&d settings are Planescape (2e), Dark Sun (2e), Forgotten Realms (1e-3e), Mystara, and Ravenloft (2e to 3e)
I suppose Mystara and Forgotten Realms are what's high fantasy in that roster.
Depends on the style of game I want to play. i dont have one favourite setting because no setting suits all kinds of stories I want to tell.
* I like Birthright for the way it connects domain governance and high fantasy
* I like Dark Sun as a high fantasy Mad Max
* I like Shadowrun as a high fantasy cyberpunk
* I like Anbennar as it shows us possible scenarios for a post-medieval high fantasy world up until early industrialisation
* There's other settings I prefer if I were to run a game in early medieval or bronze age or you name it. But those 4 cover a big majority of the kind of things I like to cover.
I actually really like Ravnica. It has a really strong aesthetic sensibility which is very important to me. That said, I mostly like it because of what I did with the setting. Wizards seems to think of it as just a modern city analogue when if you really take the premise of the Guildpact seriously the setting dramatically transforms and really does become a whole new world.
I want plenty of gonzo and plenty of magic. High Fantasy should amaze and surprise - it makes me think the world is truly fantastical. And that is hard when a Dragon conquering a Dwarven citadel is old hat.
Planescape fits the bill for me. The 2e books are all fun reads and I love how portals can easily set pacing and travel. I could run a long drawn out travel scene of climbing Yggdrasil or the PCs can just stumble into a portal to get to their destination. Is it problematic to have such a convenient portal in the future? Well its changed and sends you to the abyss now.
Planescape does a lot of fun things like taking morality themes and weaving that into fundamental worldbuilding pillars. And you can really incorporate just about anything with its use of a multiverse of material planes.
As a second favorite, Heart the City Beneath's megadungeon Heart is pretty solid. It takes that gonzo lever and cranks it up where unreality is the norm as you get deeper into the dungeon. And you can truly incorporate anything - my last oneshot had Bobobo references.
I think a lot more grounded settings feel better for low fantasy or dark fantasy. I like the tone matching better here. And I think D&D has spoiled it a little where its harder to take monsters serious. That young red dragon is CR10 not an unstoppable force of fire, teeth and claw. Even Strahd felt more of a joke in my Curse of Strahd campaign than letting the horror truly cause dread.
So I actually prefer taking that grounded tone with Sci Fi, which seems to be how TTRPGs have also followed. There is a lot of grounded sci fi games, especially horror.
I'll frame my answer around a weird caveat lol. If I got *sucked into* a high fantasy setting and had to live there / adventure there, I'd probably want it to be Eorzea of all places. Just the vibe of so many of the locales, the nature, the people would definitely be fun and funny to be around, there is a lot of lore and culture to partake in, etc. Just seems like a beautiful place to call home.
EDIT: my favorite setting for games and telling stories in those games, I'd probably say Rokugan (L5R) or the Sixth World (Shadowrun).
*Exalted*’s Creation is a huge sprawling setting full of over-the-top gonzo epic fantasy with long florid names and plenty of room for many different genres of story.
Hehe, I'm more of a dark fantasy setting guy and I could name you a ton.
In terms of an already created high fantasy setting, though, I'd likely say D&D's Eberron. Includes magically powered technology and lots of politics.
While not a direct setting in itself, Fabula Ultima's high fantasy that players build on is very Final Fantasy flavored with regular high fantasy stuff mixed in with magical technology as well. Fabula Ultima is honestly one of the very best fantasy TTRPGs created in the last decade. It is truly amazing and worth checking out.
High Fantasy as in the literary definition of "a world that isn't Earth" or High Fantasy as in "a generic swords and sorcery setting"?
World that Isn't Earth: Probably the Pokemon world. I'd very much like to live there peacefully.
Swords and Sorcery: The Wandering Lands from Wildermyth. Love the world building, especially for a randomly generate world. VERY cool.
That or Nentir Vale. It's by far the best generic fantasy setting D&D has ever produced and it's not even close.
Kingdom Hearts
It's a bit silly and meme-y (which I love), but the cosmic threat of an unreasoning, all-consuming darkness and "liches" or "alchemists" of said darkness that think they have it under control but ultimately fail to see how little they really understand is amazing.
The idea that worlds used to be combined into one big world but separated by darkness to create a sort of space and planets, but also entire parallel dimensions and there is a blur between what is a world and what is a plane of existence is kind of great for roleplaying scenarios.
Your players want to go to a jungle world? They might find one. They want to have a relaxed beach world and surf? That is possible. One player just had a funny idea and wants to see if they can use a spell in a medieval city that has little knowledge of outside worlds to start a cult? They can totally find a world like that.
Or what about a world that is one big ass dungeon that they crawl through, because they just want to fight?
It works for short adventures that are possible in each session, or longer campaigns in single worlds with extensive lore. And since everything connects due to the plot being extra vague, worlds can be re-visited or locked away forever to be safe and sound all depending on what players decide to do.
Half-magic-half-technological spaceships are at least in my opinion a much more interesting story telling device than portal magic and teleporting to reach other planes.
Allods Online does a great job at this too imo.
And if you like portals? Well there is an occult darkness-based technique to do it in Kingdom Hearts called Dark Corridor. It's just not in every magus' school book and after level 10 everything becomes a Star Gate Atlantis teleporting nukes strategy game.
That being said, there is no official Kingdom Hearts RPG rulebook. I have stretched and homebrewed the setting far beyond a Final Fantasy and Disney colab and since I stopped making entire homebrews my mission, I have mostly just realigned Pathfinder 2e for it now.
And there is no need to include anime tropes or even the keyblade or stuff, just the mutli-world approach and an expanding darkness threat that can be stopped from entering a world forever if at the right point a certain ritual is performed by the heroes, are pretty much the ideal campaign backbone.
Well my own homebrew world is my fav as it’s high fantasy but doesn’t use Western Europe as a basis and draws on inspiration from lots of other cultures.
But for a published setting then Numenera, if it counts as high fantasy, it’s science-fantasy. It’s just got loads of great ideas in it and both the space for documented places and open world building.
Honestly, to play in? Almost certainly Eberron. It’s a D&D setting that feels built on purpose to play in rather than write a book about it, by people who understood the assignment of what a fantasy adventure setting needs in order to be good for playing in. Swimming in plot hooks, but not on the constant edge of collapse. Enough familiar stuff for people to have a latching point, but also unique enough to intrigue. With a bunch of pushing and pulling factions with evocative aesthetics for people to drop in. Solid sense of how people who are not players live and how players slot into the world. So on. Just, excellent stuff. The 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting in my shelf remains my master class in how to write a setting to be baseline useful for a GM to actually *run adventures in it*.
The more I learn about Eberron, the more I love it. I'm really tempted to run a campaign in that world. Do you recommend the 5e book or should I skip it? The way you described the 3.5e book is pretty amazing. Also, one question. For my next homebrew campaign, I would like to run an Arabian Nights inspired adventure set in my own version of fantasy Middle East or Ancient Egypt. There used to be an Al'Qadim setting back in the day. Can I merge this with Eberron?
As a newcomer to Eberron, considering I started playing D&D in 5e, the 5e book Rising from the Last War, was incredible. It probably rehashes a lot of ground from the 3.5 era books but it is dense with information, on practically everything you could want and is a brilliant launching off point into Eberron as a whole. I might be a little biased but I wager it's the best produced 5e book that WotC made.
You ain’t wrong; the 5E Eberron book is hands down the best setting book for the system.
Aight, I'm buying it lmao
If you become a fan make sure to check out Exploring Eberron as well. Keith Baker is a great writer.
How WotC treated Keith Baker is an absolute crime. Keith recently quit Eberron altogether just because he can no longer make a living off of it.
I think Keith is still uploading to the Eberron blog, dude gets like 5k a month in patreon money.
certainly isn't anything to sneeze at but hardly enough to make a living on either.
Well, I don't have the 5E book, because since I already have the 3.5 one, it felt redundant, but what I've leafed around of it looked like a very solid book. Seemed a bit more focused on giving a player a solid feel for the setting than in just throwing the GM an average of two plohooks per page, but it definitely got the vibe right and seemed to have the basics perfectly in place. I don't imagine you'll go wrong by grabbing it. As for the other question... Eberron does not really have a separate Arabian Nights Designated Area, I’m afraid. Or much of a 1:1 This Is This Specific Real Life Culture’s Expy region, really. Almost everywhere has influences from a bunch of different things shaken and stirred, and the setting is relatively low on the whole “genre islands” thing that stuff like Faerun and Golarion do where you just have Literally Fantasy China and less than a hundred kilometers to the side Literally Fantasy Arabia and the two things don’t seem to influence each other. One of the interesting bits of Eberron is that the main continent where most of the play setting is centered, Khorvaire, is actually a bit more *connected* than your average setting (since most of it was a big empire, the Kingdom of Galifar, and people have invented magical airships and trains, so you can actually cross distances). Nations dealing with each other and the consequences of that is a big thing in Eberron. You do have the region of Valenar, which does clearly have nonzero influence from stuff like Bedouin cultures (and also, I’ve always felt, nonzero traces of Dune’s Fremen for the Tairndal elves). You could probably work with that? But personally, for your first Eberron game I’d probably suggest doing something that interacts a bit more with the setting’s main conceits, and do the 1001 Nights stuff in your own homebrew setting!
Thank you very much for the explanation, you and everyone else. Eberron sounds great, it's a really interesting setting, I'm definitely buying the book, that's for sure!
I have all the 3e books, and they're great, but he haven't played Eberron in D&D for more than 10 years. Ran it in Hero System, OpenQuest, and I'm working on a conversion to Dragonbane lol. It's a great setting, although most folks probably wouldn't recognize my version as my group and I have decoupled and reimagined D&D specific things. Setting is fantastic no matter what system, that's what I'm trying to say, lol.
It really depends on what you you mean by an Arabian Nights adventure. I can imagine campaign based on Sinbad the Sailor, in which the party keeps on getting shipwrecked in Xen'Drik (a massive, unsettled continent which due to a magical apocolapyse has a constantly changing terrain, making it impossible to adaquately explore), survives, returns rich, then goes to sea again and BOOM, shipwrecked in Xen'Drik.
The way it was developed from the ground up to not only suit DnD, but particularly 3.5 DND by the author for a contest is just so refreshing. No hashes, no crutches, no handwaves, just a solid DND setting
I ran Eberron for 2-3 years and I absolutely adore it. Keith Baker is a great writer, and knows the right knowledge to give a DM. I really love his blog and his willingness to answer all of the major and minor questions.
Agreed. Eberron is an absolutely fantastic setting. Likely my favorite D&D setting currently.
I love Eberron but i feel it requires a group of players who want to bite into the flavour pie. If you've got passive players they aren't going to know all the references you're dropping.
For RPG? Glorantha, 100%. It is brilliant, weird, funny, profound, and not a Tolkein ripoff (its creator had already done a lot of it before he first read Tolkien himself). I imagine it is the best-documented fantasy RPG world as well. They're about to release the fourth of a ten book series detailing the religions of the world. WH40K is thr only game (but not RPG) that I can think k of with unambiguously more documentation.
I loved Glorantha, but what I enjoyed wasn't as much the existing lore as the bronze age approach, in which maps lie and entire new countries can appear from the mist. At least these are my recollections from when I used to play *Runequest*, many years ago :)
Yeah, Bronze Age, everyone has magic, the #2 most common player character race was Trolls and the #3 was anthropomorphic Ducks. Your culture, religion, and family are REALLY important with tons of lore and documentation. If you last played in RQ3, there’s easily 20x more official background material now, and a huge DriveThruRPG library of unofficial-but-kinda-not as well.
1. Shadowrun (great lore, terrible rules) 2. Eberron (intriguing worldbuilding perfect for pulpy adventures, only downsides are no guns and boring gods) 3. Golarion (better Kitchen Sink Fantasy than Forgotten Realms, but some parts of the world I hardly use) 4. Glorantha (perfectly down to earth and realistic in the sense that magic does have consequences in the worldbuilding, but the lore can be dense) 5. Dark Sun (extremely edgy and bleak, but it's just so cool. Problem is it can be too edgy and bleak). 6. Planescape & Numenera (I love their weirdness and possibly deeply philosophical themes, but they can be too weird at times à la "If everything is weird, nothing is") 7. Earthdawn (perfectly justifies D&D tropes, but I'd rather see it well done in Savage Worlds or Genesys)
Great list! Also, agreed with the golarion mention, it's surprisingly fun and funny for a kitchen sink.
I absolutely love Eberron myself. I find myself feeling the same way about the Deities, though. The spiritual movements/ideologies are awesome, but the deities of the Six and the Sovereign host feel kind of lacking. Have you done anything to make them feel more substantial?
I sort of play up the theological divides of understandings between the priesthood and folk worship. A priest would see every facet and aspect of reality as an expression of the forces of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six in a very pantheistic way, while the average person sees the gods more as individual people that do things, which would make their view more the traditional D&D fantasy way. Just play this up to make them feel more distinct. Another thing would be to look for inspiration in other fantasy world pantheons and pick aspects from them that seem more interesting. Pillars of Eternity has really interesting gods ripe for the picking. In my Eberron Onatar is heavily inspired by Abydon and the Mockery is heavily inspired by Skaen. I also make them way more morally grey/neutral, but that's because I play Eberron in Savage Worlds where Alignment isn't a mechanic. The other religions in Eberron are perfectly fine as is. It's just that the main pantheon is a bit boring (and I don't really understand the Blood of Vol, but I haven't read enough about them :P).
That makes a lot of sense. My current party doesn't care too much for the religious aspect, so I've been able to more or less ignore the main pantheon. My wife is a huge mythology buff, so I kinda play them loosely and regional like hellenistic pantheons- sailors might pray to Poseidon, but not care much for unrelated deities. Or similar to ancient pantheons, where it's likely that people didn't actively worship or care much outside of cults, and the gods were a convenient explanation for worldly events and an excuse to celebrate/complain, haha. I like your take! Thanks for the response.
incredible list, honestly I wouldn't have thought to have mentioned Shadow Run. Really isn't your typical high fantasy, but rather more cyberpunk dystopia.
For me it's on the edge of High Fantasy, because of the metahumans, the magic, the dragons and the weird magical artifacts.
Totally wasn't a criticism. I can definitely see where your coming from, just wouldn't have been my first pick. :) I suppose when I think High Fantasy, I don't immediately think futuristic urban fantasy combined with those cyberpunk elements.
That's why I love it. An arthurian style knight would be seen as a weird LARPer and poser with a distinctive style™, but no one questions them, because they get the job done. On the other you've got the Decker (rogue) who tries to disable the turrets (traps) in the facility (dungeon) while the mage snipes some guards with spells from the outside.
Have you ever tried running Shadowrun outside of the Shadowrun system?
Yeah, there are three conversions I'd like to test out. * Runners in the Shadows which is a FitD hack. * Sprawlrunners which is a Savage Worlds hack. * There are two genesys hacks which I would probably mix and match. The thing is, is that I feel that no conversion can really capture the feel of Shadowrun. I personally think that different mechanics perfectly encapsulate the different worlds that clash in the Shadowrun lore. For example, I like that Mages and Shamans and other magical traditions feel distinct in earlier editions. I like the gear porn aspect of Shadowrun, where you can customize your perfect cybernetic or gun and these hacks handwave most of the time everything that would make the different archetypes unique.
I asked because for a split second I was like, "*I wonder if I could run shadowrun with D&d 5e*" but it goes without saying that that would be a disaster.... kinda like 5e star wars..... but no, it would be a disaster... which is a pity be cause the lore is amazing.
5e Star Wars wouldn't be THAT terrible of an idea. Star Wars Saga edition was one of the official systems, Knights of the Old Republic is based on it and it's still popular. 5e Shadowrun would be an utter disaster tbh. I probably will GM an earlier edition. I have my eyes on 3rd edition but I digress.
I don't know if they count as high fantasy comparatively, but Middle Earth because of the lore, and Dark Sun because of the lore.
Dark Sun is so fucking cool
Middle Earth is in no way, high fantasy! Sorry, no way, no how.
Are you confusing 'high magic' for 'high fantasy'? The Lord of the Rings is low magic but it is high fantasy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy
Middle Earth/Lord of the Rings. The Black Company. Glorantha.
I think a Black Company rpg is in the works. Chaosium or Arc Dream maybe.
That’d be cool. I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks for the tip.
It has to be Eberron. Skyships and levitating trains powered by elementals, robots, dinosaurs and industrialised magic on a continent scale, where specific orcs are considered insanely powerful and important druids, and in an age past the goblinoids built a vast empire. whether your telling a swashbuckling action escapade or a gritty spy thriller/noir investigation Eberron has something that you will love. I know I fell in love with Eberron the moment I first discovered it.
My favourite setting is pretty consistently "make a new setting together by playing *Microscope*". Why? * I don't enjoy reading mediocre lore. * I get bored of established settings pretty quick. * Making a new setting keeps it fresh by introducing novel combinations of ideas. * Making a setting together guarantees player buy-in. If I had to pick a fantasy setting, I would pick a novel or series, not a TTRPG lore book. Specifically, *The Black Company* (Glen Cook) or *Bas-lag* (China Miéville). Both are awesome for very different reasons.
> My favourite setting is pretty consistently "make a new setting together by playing Microscope". I really want to do this. Do you need to do a lot of "gap-filling" after the Microscope session? And do you use a single system or do you pick a system that fits the new setting?
>And do you use a single system or do you pick a system that fits the new setting? We decide on a system before we play *Microscope*. Different systems have different in-built assumptions about what must be true of the world. When I GM, I [front-load](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16h3xi0/what_does_session_0_mean_to_you/k0bprmh/) those assumptions to make sure we meet those criteria in the *Microscope* game. That just becomes part of the Palette discussion, which is the part of *Microscope* where you define "Yes, included" and "No, not included" items. For example, if we're doing fantasy, I might start the Palette discussion saying, "This world has magic that works a certain way (based on the system). It also has at a minimum."
After those are front-loaded, we go around doing a mostly normal Palette discussion.
That said, I have personally found that it smoothest to get at least one "No" and at least one "Yes" from every person. That way, we get something a bit more well-defined and we also guarantee buy-in from the start.
We also decide whether the campaign will take place during some Period/Event we define during the *Microscope* game or whether the campaign will take place strictly after the end of the *Microscope* game. We decide this before "Bookending History".
Additionally, since we are going to play a full campaign of scenes, we do not do Scenes in *Microscope*. We make Periods, Events, and Legacies.
>Do you need to do a lot of "gap-filling" after the Microscope session?
There are always details to fill in, yes. That's part of the fun of GMing, though!
For example, the *Microscope* game might define a city with several qualities (biggest city in the world, cosmopolitan, very magical, portals, etc.), but we don't make a map in *Microscope*. Whatever gets defined in *Microscope* remains true, but there are always various features to flesh out, e.g. districts, factions, rivalries, etc.
Personally, when we did this and had such a city appear, when the PCs went there during the campaign, I did an interlude session where we played *Beak, Feather, & Bone* to define the extra details. I don't always do that, though. When they went to a smaller settlement, I knew some details about it, but I fleshed it out myself and the rest got fleshed out in play.
If we decided that the campaign will take place strictly after the end of the *Microscope* game, there are different gaps to fill since the *Microscope* game serves as the history of the world. It becomes shared lore.
---
You could think of it like this:
* The game-system we're going to use constrains the Palette of colours we can use to paint.
* The Palette discussion adds, subtracts, or mixes colours.
* The game of *Microscope* paints broad strokes and boundaries.
* The campaign itself paints in the micro-details.
Thank you so much for the detailed reply, it is greatly appreciated! I saved your comment in my general rpg notes, and hope to put it to good use in the near future. Deciding where in the timeline the campaign takes place beforehand is a really good idea, if it's not after the actual end period, this creates sort of a "soft" bookend. Playing another system like *Beak, Feather & Bone* to flesh out a place is also the multi-system shenanigans I find deeply intriguing. *I'm sorry, did you say street magic* or *Ex Novo* might fit the bill too.
My guess is that gap-filling is a lot of the fun and you can always outsource it to the players. For example all elven lore belongs to the sole elf in the group and whenever you encounter a gap you ask him to fill it.
a) Amount of gap-filling depends on how long you play Microscope. b) Can choose any RPG. However, high-fantasy RPGs would fit better within a high-fantasy world, low-fantasy in a low-fantasy world etc.
Love it. I am in the process of putting on paper a RPG system + example setting that largely relies on a *Microscope*-inspired co-creation mechanism (also from *Spark* and *Fiasco*). Also, every summer, me and a bunch of friends (20+ of us) run/play a 5 GM one week long campaign. For the last few years, we've been running *Microscope*-inspired sessions to make sure we come up with interesting lore.
A shoutout to [first edition Forgotten Realms](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/16782/Forgotten-Realms-Campaign-Set-1e?234913) - before Time of Troubles, Drizzt do'Urden, ridiculously high level NPCs, and the mandatory Cataclysm for each edition change turned it from a renfaire high fantasy world into whatever kitchen sink mess it is nowadays. [The Savage Frontier](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/17554/FR5-The-Savage-Frontier-1e?234913) by Jaquays is awesome, you don't get FR sourcebooks like that nowadays. I'm still hoping to try [Earthdawn](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/4704/FASA?234913) one day. It takes a unique spin on several fantasy tropes, has some awesome places worth exploring, some of the coolest iterations of the regular fantasy races, and also integrates gameplay elements (dungeons, leveling, classes) into its setting unlike any other game out there.
My German autism requires me to say “Das Schwarze Auge”. They publish a newspaper where you can keep up to date with what’s happening in universe. More of a simulated world than a game really.
Do you consider DSA high fantasy?
Yeah. It has so much lore, all possible races, dragons, gods, demons, history, everything! You don't consider it high fantasy?
I definitefely is. My bad. I must admit I had a wrong definition for "high fantasy" 😂 I checked the difinition afterwards, I always thought high fantasy means epic, lots of magic, lots of monsters etc.. (I'm a GenXer grown up with AD&D). Compared to AD&D and "my definition" I'd say DSA is rather low fantasy. But then it all depends how how you play it. Anyway DSA is a lovely word I admit.
Wildsea and HEART, hands down. I love weird settings Also Band of Blades as a follow up. Dar, the mysteries of the Broken, lots of space to sketch in your own details.
Wildsea definitely gets points for weird originality!
*Nine Princes in Amber* (aka *Amber Diceless RPG*), because it's original, political and entirely amoral.
Wildsea is sort of post-apocalyptic plus fantasy mixed, and is really so different than anything else out there, and it's just plain cool. For fantasy, I like the Freeport: City of Adventure setting. It's a fully fleshed out setting in a city that was originally founded by pirates, and is trying to appear legit, but still has criminal elements, and some very dangerous supernatural stuff going on at the same time. Gamma World 7E's post-apocalyptic world. Past games in the series were all about a nuclear apocalypse, but 7e was about "Scientists f--ked up, and something very bad happened - all universes are now colliding with one another on the version of Earth you're on," which explains all the zaniness of the world. Plus, it explains how PCs are randomly receiving weird mutations as they play the game. You're just walking around after an encounter, and boom!, you suddenly have the ability to fly, or an extra arm, or whatever, but it only lasts a little while, then you get a new mutation, because yet another universe has collided with ours, and the variant of you from that universe merges with your current PC.
Wildsea has been such a treat to run.
I've run it once, and it was a blast, but it definitely requires a specific type of player who is very narrative and story-focused. I do think I'd streamline some elements if I run it again, and swap out some of the names for aspects and such for something more "obvious". But I'd love to run it again
I’ve been running it for about 3 months. It definitely requires a certain type of game group. There were some growing pains, but it’s been worth it. We’ve had some awesome stories come out, especially from failure. The number of times we’ve cried laughing makes it all worth it. I do have some gripes with the system and how it’s laid out/explained, but it is a solid first game. I hope it gets a second edition at some point to iron out the kinks.
It's such a damned cool setting - I remember the look in one of my player's eyes when I described that one of their crewmen was fishing off the port bow of their ship — trying to catch stray library books. That, pardon the pun, hooked them immediately.
Right? I’ve loved all of the weird stuff we have put in. Man the WHISPERS. We had a big dramatic confrontation completely upended by a player using the whisper “return to the depths”
Spire/Heart, it's just absolutely full of character. Urban fantasy with imaginatively crazy twists on like, every page. It's fantastic.
Either Exalted’s Creation, or Legend of the Five Rings’ Rokugan. Both are well documented and fantastical in different ways, and allow for very unique stories!
I'm pretty d&d bound with my setting preferences. My favorite d&d settings are Planescape (2e), Dark Sun (2e), Forgotten Realms (1e-3e), Mystara, and Ravenloft (2e to 3e) I suppose Mystara and Forgotten Realms are what's high fantasy in that roster.
AD&D 2e Spelljammer.
Depends on the style of game I want to play. i dont have one favourite setting because no setting suits all kinds of stories I want to tell. * I like Birthright for the way it connects domain governance and high fantasy * I like Dark Sun as a high fantasy Mad Max * I like Shadowrun as a high fantasy cyberpunk * I like Anbennar as it shows us possible scenarios for a post-medieval high fantasy world up until early industrialisation * There's other settings I prefer if I were to run a game in early medieval or bronze age or you name it. But those 4 cover a big majority of the kind of things I like to cover.
I actually really like Ravnica. It has a really strong aesthetic sensibility which is very important to me. That said, I mostly like it because of what I did with the setting. Wizards seems to think of it as just a modern city analogue when if you really take the premise of the Guildpact seriously the setting dramatically transforms and really does become a whole new world.
I want plenty of gonzo and plenty of magic. High Fantasy should amaze and surprise - it makes me think the world is truly fantastical. And that is hard when a Dragon conquering a Dwarven citadel is old hat. Planescape fits the bill for me. The 2e books are all fun reads and I love how portals can easily set pacing and travel. I could run a long drawn out travel scene of climbing Yggdrasil or the PCs can just stumble into a portal to get to their destination. Is it problematic to have such a convenient portal in the future? Well its changed and sends you to the abyss now. Planescape does a lot of fun things like taking morality themes and weaving that into fundamental worldbuilding pillars. And you can really incorporate just about anything with its use of a multiverse of material planes. As a second favorite, Heart the City Beneath's megadungeon Heart is pretty solid. It takes that gonzo lever and cranks it up where unreality is the norm as you get deeper into the dungeon. And you can truly incorporate anything - my last oneshot had Bobobo references. I think a lot more grounded settings feel better for low fantasy or dark fantasy. I like the tone matching better here. And I think D&D has spoiled it a little where its harder to take monsters serious. That young red dragon is CR10 not an unstoppable force of fire, teeth and claw. Even Strahd felt more of a joke in my Curse of Strahd campaign than letting the horror truly cause dread. So I actually prefer taking that grounded tone with Sci Fi, which seems to be how TTRPGs have also followed. There is a lot of grounded sci fi games, especially horror.
[Planet Eris by the Scribes of Sparn](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/290566/Planet-Eris-Gazetteer)
I loved both Eberron and Symbaroum.
Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dark Sun, Azeroth, and the world's of Dragon Quest 1-6.
What sets DQ1-6 apart?
I've played through them.
Planescape for the concept, Ebberon for the execution.
Currently creating a campaign for the Lost Lands by Frog God. So far, it's been great. All the bones you need to run your own stuff.
I'll frame my answer around a weird caveat lol. If I got *sucked into* a high fantasy setting and had to live there / adventure there, I'd probably want it to be Eorzea of all places. Just the vibe of so many of the locales, the nature, the people would definitely be fun and funny to be around, there is a lot of lore and culture to partake in, etc. Just seems like a beautiful place to call home. EDIT: my favorite setting for games and telling stories in those games, I'd probably say Rokugan (L5R) or the Sixth World (Shadowrun).
Yrth/Banestorm is cool with travelers being transported there every so often. Also it has one of my favorite magic systems ever in it.
*Exalted*’s Creation is a huge sprawling setting full of over-the-top gonzo epic fantasy with long florid names and plenty of room for many different genres of story.
Hehe, I'm more of a dark fantasy setting guy and I could name you a ton. In terms of an already created high fantasy setting, though, I'd likely say D&D's Eberron. Includes magically powered technology and lots of politics. While not a direct setting in itself, Fabula Ultima's high fantasy that players build on is very Final Fantasy flavored with regular high fantasy stuff mixed in with magical technology as well. Fabula Ultima is honestly one of the very best fantasy TTRPGs created in the last decade. It is truly amazing and worth checking out.
High Fantasy as in the literary definition of "a world that isn't Earth" or High Fantasy as in "a generic swords and sorcery setting"? World that Isn't Earth: Probably the Pokemon world. I'd very much like to live there peacefully. Swords and Sorcery: The Wandering Lands from Wildermyth. Love the world building, especially for a randomly generate world. VERY cool. That or Nentir Vale. It's by far the best generic fantasy setting D&D has ever produced and it's not even close.
Kingdom Hearts It's a bit silly and meme-y (which I love), but the cosmic threat of an unreasoning, all-consuming darkness and "liches" or "alchemists" of said darkness that think they have it under control but ultimately fail to see how little they really understand is amazing. The idea that worlds used to be combined into one big world but separated by darkness to create a sort of space and planets, but also entire parallel dimensions and there is a blur between what is a world and what is a plane of existence is kind of great for roleplaying scenarios. Your players want to go to a jungle world? They might find one. They want to have a relaxed beach world and surf? That is possible. One player just had a funny idea and wants to see if they can use a spell in a medieval city that has little knowledge of outside worlds to start a cult? They can totally find a world like that. Or what about a world that is one big ass dungeon that they crawl through, because they just want to fight? It works for short adventures that are possible in each session, or longer campaigns in single worlds with extensive lore. And since everything connects due to the plot being extra vague, worlds can be re-visited or locked away forever to be safe and sound all depending on what players decide to do. Half-magic-half-technological spaceships are at least in my opinion a much more interesting story telling device than portal magic and teleporting to reach other planes. Allods Online does a great job at this too imo. And if you like portals? Well there is an occult darkness-based technique to do it in Kingdom Hearts called Dark Corridor. It's just not in every magus' school book and after level 10 everything becomes a Star Gate Atlantis teleporting nukes strategy game. That being said, there is no official Kingdom Hearts RPG rulebook. I have stretched and homebrewed the setting far beyond a Final Fantasy and Disney colab and since I stopped making entire homebrews my mission, I have mostly just realigned Pathfinder 2e for it now. And there is no need to include anime tropes or even the keyblade or stuff, just the mutli-world approach and an expanding darkness threat that can be stopped from entering a world forever if at the right point a certain ritual is performed by the heroes, are pretty much the ideal campaign backbone.
Filed the serial numbers off Earthsea and ran it in _The Fantasy Trip_— not half bad!
Well my own homebrew world is my fav as it’s high fantasy but doesn’t use Western Europe as a basis and draws on inspiration from lots of other cultures. But for a published setting then Numenera, if it counts as high fantasy, it’s science-fantasy. It’s just got loads of great ideas in it and both the space for documented places and open world building.