Knights & Knaves Alehouse

During college, I ran in FR with occasional adventures to Ravenloft. If I had known then what I know now, though, I would have used Cerilia instead, the main continent for the Birthright setting.

Now days, I couldn't pin one down for running (A)D&D. I really dig how grim and harsh Robert Schwalb's Urth setting is for Shadow of the Demon Lord so I could see using or, at the very least, pulling from that.

robertsconley wrote:Cool that my Wild North made the cut.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Wilderlands is really the one. It hits all the right notes in structure and feel, and it is a GM's sandbox instead of someone's super-duper special vision.

(I will parenthetically note Tékumel, which is very much someone's super-duper special vision, just very good at what it's doing. Bonus points for being the best OD&D variant out there.)

I respect Greyhawk but don't know anyone around me who can do it justice. I play in a local, very infrequent Forgotten Realms game (with 3.0 rules, too!), and have grown to tolerate its flaws if the campaign itself is good. Used to really detest the thing, but eh.

Flambeaux wrote:

Philotomy Jurament wrote:Homebrew world is Black Sabbath. Greyhawk is Rush. Forgotten Realms is Britney Spears. Dragonlance is Tiffany.

Dude, Dragonlance is HAWT!

Despite the fact that Dragonlance was in Playboy, I'm still gonna go with FFC-style Blackmoor -- when I'm not interested in homebrewing. My second choice would be Advanced Fighting Fantasy's Titan.

Melan wrote:The Wilderlands is really the one. It hits all the right notes in structure and feel, and it is a GM's sandbox instead of someone's super-duper special vision.

This, for me too!
I’ve been a Wilderlands of High Fantasy DM for as long as I’ve been DMing (since 1981). Had to have room for all that gonzo Arduin shit I used to use on a regular basis.

Home brew for me, though Greyhawk has serious nostalgia points as my junior high through early college campaign was set in it.

ThirstyStirge wrote:I'm still gonna go with FFC-style Blackmoor...

That 1977 hex map of Blackmoor is my favorite D&D overland map, bar none. Its waterlines are amazing. What an evocative map!

Flambeaux wrote: Now...ummm...I enjoy playing with particular DMs more than particular worlds/settings. Maybe Greyhawk?
I tried running Greyhawk-based games but never felt confident I had a solid handle on the politics and mythology to make it feel "real".

First of all, I'm new to K&KA, and this is my first post. Hi all!

When it comes to con games, I really agree about DM over world. There's rarely time to truly poke around or dig into the nitty gritty that makes a setting good. ("Oops, we just had a four hour session with lots of political intrigue but zero encounters...." isn't most people's cup of con tea.) And I suppose I could even have a fun time in Tiffany, I mean, Krynn. For a campaign, the world becomes less irrelevant for me. I have an unreasonable affection for Greyhawk, having just run a 5-6 year TOEE campaign there. But I felt the same as you -- there is so much published material that I would never consider myself an expert in it. I tried to balance honesty about any gaps in my knowledge with confidence in improvised changes. Seeing everyone's preferences is giving me a list of things to go read....

Philotomy Jurament wrote:Homebrew world is Black Sabbath. Greyhawk is Rush. Forgotten Realms is Britney Spears. Dragonlance is Tiffany.

1e Greyhawk (my preferred published campaign setting) was Bon Scott's AC/DC & Blue Oyster Cult, but so did all of my crossovers into Gamma World.

I've only ever played one Wilderlands session exploring the Book of Ilhedron, and that was Black Sabbath.

Forgotten Realms is Nickelback; almost sounds good but way too polished; the 1e boxed set was a garage cover band for a real rock band: raw, unedited, and is infinitely more entertaining than the polished version out now.

My homebrew is KMFDM & Die Antwoord, but that may be because I'm currently running 5e...)

I've always liked the Known World as presented in Cook/Marsh's Expert rules and X1 Isle of Dread. Iron Maiden & KISS.

Dragonlance... the theme song to Dragon Tales... I'd rather be a player in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show campaign setting, or be forced to watch Dragon Tales with my infant son again (he's 12 now, btw) than play Dragonlance.

The Traveller/Paranoia/Metamorphosis Alpha game I never got to run fuelled by Frank Zappa.

bobjester wrote:I've always liked the Known World as presented in Cook/Marsh's Expert rules and X1 Isle of Dread. Iron Maiden & KISS.

A while back Lawrence Schick talked about the original Known World, and it does indeed sound pretty fun and not at all like Mystara. I'm pretty sure in the right hands Mystara could be a decent setting - but it would demand a ruthless editorial willingness to chop out all the (ahem) more childish aspects. No Mentzer-isms, none of that tacked on Blackmoor, no flying ships, none of those hideous cookie-cutter hexmaps, absolutely no artwork even slightly reminiscent of something Clyde Caldwell had a hand in. In other words, anything that Mystara superfans get the tingles about would have to go.

If not home brew, then Greyhawk.

Geoffrey wrote:

ThirstyStirge wrote:I'm still gonna go with FFC-style Blackmoor...

That 1977 hex map of Blackmoor is my favorite D&D overland map, bar none. Its waterlines are amazing. What an evocative map!

Totally agree. I had heard it rumoured that Arneson (?) had taken an old, historical map of the Dutch coastline and used it to create the Blackmoor map, although the scale and topography where altered. Maybe I read that over on The Comeback Inn forum. If that's true, I'd love to see the Dutch original for comparison!

ThirstyStirge wrote:I had heard it rumoured that Arneson (?) had taken an old, historical map of the Dutch coastline and used it to create the Blackmoor map, although the scale and topography where altered. Maybe I read that over on The Comeback Inn forum. If that's true, I'd love to see the Dutch original for comparison!

http://jamesmishler.blogspot.com/2009/1 ... -maps.html

Kellri wrote:

bobjester wrote:I've always liked the Known World as presented in Cook/Marsh's Expert rules and X1 Isle of Dread. Iron Maiden & KISS.

A while back Lawrence Schick talked about the original Known World, and it does indeed sound pretty fun and not at all like Mystara. I'm pretty sure in the right hands Mystara could be a decent setting - but it would demand a ruthless editorial willingness to chop out all the (ahem) more childish aspects. No Mentzer-isms, none of that tacked on Blackmoor, no flying ships, none of those hideous cookie-cutter hexmaps, absolutely no artwork even slightly reminiscent of something Clyde Caldwell had a hand in. In other words, anything that Mystara superfans get the tingles about would have to go.

Coincidentally, I just picked up a couple of Tom Moldvay’s adventures for his post-TSR Lords of Creation rpg and started wondering about a hypothetical Moldvay-World rpg, tacking Lords of Creation onto B/X D&D. The systems aren’t particularly similar mechanically, but they “feel” similar. (Not a mistake, I’m sure; AH even used the same font in LoC that TSR did in B/X.) I’d D&D-ize LoC more than vice versa.

Use the B/X books plus B4, X1 and X2 as your campaign basics. And maybe strip out some concepts from M3, or maybe scale it down to real D&D levels - I’m not sure. Add whatever hints you can get from the Internet blurbs on the Akron campaign. Plus the example PCs in the DM’s Adventure Log and the non-Greyhawk characters in the Rogue’s Gallery. Plus anything that looks like it belongs from A2. Plus Deities & Demigods, especially the Cthulhu and Non-Human deities. Plus Moldvay’s Dragon articles. Maybe check Law Schick’s S2 and A4 for anything that looks like it’d fit. (On second thought, White Plume Mountain would be mandatory.) Keep in mind that as dimension hopping gets more common, not only will there be the various literary and mythological worlds available, but also Volturnus (Star Frontiers), gangland Chicago (Gangbuster) and the Old West (Boot Hill).

So you’ve got a Tolkien-esque upper world with lost men (the rat-men Rodemus family and Cynideceans) just below the surface and lost Cthulhu-esque races below that (kopru and carnifex). Dimension hopping starts common and gets more and more frequent, with visitors from other realities regularly intruding into the campaign world and the pcs visiting historical earth, other planets, and worlds from literature.

I think it would be pretty mandatory to have a bunch of gates and portals in one of the earliest dungeons. So maybe at third level, after the pcs wipe out the wererats under the Haunted Keep, they find a gate that briefly takes them to 1920s Chicago.

bigmc3 wrote:First of all, I'm new to K&KA, and this is my first post. Hi all!

Welcome!

It was a "Greyhawk-ish" home brew for me. It contained B1, B2, T1, and the G-D series, but I did not have the Greyhawk folio, so it was kinda incidentally Greyhawk. Region maps were my own, so i placed Hommlet, Quasqueton, the Keep, etc in this world. If I was running something today I think I'd still do the same thing.