Knights & Knaves Alehouse

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

Welcome!

bigmc3 wrote:

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!

Hello and welcome!
Fun first post!
--Ron--

So it certainly seems of the big main 3, greyhawk gets the MOST love.. with DL getting the least..

garhkal wrote:So it certainly seems of the big main 3, greyhawk gets the MOST love.. with DL getting the least..

Does this really surprise you here?

I love DL more than FR, personally. FR is such a kitchen sink that it just doesn’t end up having a lot of meaning, to me. DL at its best is about death knights, lost cities, dragon orbs, flying citadels, elf babes, mage towers, and time travel. The problem is it’s easy to appreciate the fantasy of it, but as a world to game on (presumably in a style palatable to me and most other K&Kers), you have to rip out a bunch of bad to dig down to the good. You’d essentially end up rebuilding from the ground up, in the end merely taking inspiration from DL. It’s a lot of work. Might as well use a setting I like better, like ME or GH, or just do a complete homebrew, with all the coolness that that comes with.

Homebrew (whoever is ref'ing). Then, if I had to run someone else's stuff, I'd probably run JG Wilderlands. Feels more like D&D to me than anything else. GH is awesome but very "Gary." Wilderlands feels like an extension of the OS board and that is more my thing.

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

Philotomy, then what is the Wilderlands? Genesis? Talking Heads?

Falconer wrote:I love DL more than FR, personally. FR is such a kitchen sink that it just doesn’t end up having a lot of meaning, to me. DL at its best is about death knights, lost cities, dragon orbs, flying citadels, elf babes, mage towers, and time travel. The problem is it’s easy to appreciate the fantasy of it, but as a world to game on (presumably in a style palatable to me and most other K&Kers), you have to rip out a bunch of bad to dig down to the good. You’d essentially end up rebuilding from the ground up, in the end merely taking inspiration from DL. It’s a lot of work. Might as well use a setting I like better, like ME or GH, or just do a complete homebrew, with all the coolness that that comes with.

I feel similarly and have likened using the Dragonlance setting to using a dictionary to pound a nail. It’d probably get it done, but there are far better tools for the job.

EOTB wrote:

garhkal wrote:So it certainly seems of the big main 3, greyhawk gets the MOST love.. with DL getting the least..

Does this really surprise you here?

I was thinking it would have been a bit more even..

rogatny wrote:

Falconer wrote:I love DL more than FR, personally. FR is such a kitchen sink that it just doesn’t end up having a lot of meaning, to me. DL at its best is about death knights, lost cities, dragon orbs, flying citadels, elf babes, mage towers, and time travel. The problem is it’s easy to appreciate the fantasy of it, but as a world to game on (presumably in a style palatable to me and most other K&Kers), you have to rip out a bunch of bad to dig down to the good. You’d essentially end up rebuilding from the ground up, in the end merely taking inspiration from DL. It’s a lot of work. Might as well use a setting I like better, like ME or GH, or just do a complete homebrew, with all the coolness that that comes with.

I feel similarly and have likened using the Dragonlance setting to using a dictionary to pound a nail. It’d probably get it done, but there are far better tools for the job.

A friend of mine ran great game set in DL. He completely ignored canon, and did as he wished.

garhkal wrote:I was thinking it would have been a bit more even..

Why?

I liked the way the moon phases fucked magic up on Krynn when I ran a game using Dragonlance. That was about the only thing I liked besides a few magic items. I found that while I enjoyed the fiction it didn't inspire me to game the way Burroughs, Leiber, or Howard did.

I might use the moons again in a homebrew or hybrid setting but I don't have the DL Adventures book that had the table anymore. One of the books I haven't reacquired in the years since I last liquidated my collection.

I'll occasionally thumb through the grey box FR set. I like it and would consider running it under the right circumstances.

Greyhawk I find intimidating. I'm uncomfortable with "making it my own"...it feels a bit like trying to take Shakespeare and convert it to contemporary slang.

I'd like to set up a game or campaign to run in almost-historical Republican Rome...but I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be for the player. I dig on ancient quotidian minutia, my players not so much.

I ran into the same problem with Flashing Blades.

ETA: rereading this as I post, it occurs to me that DL occupies the same niche as Unearthed Arcana -- interesting ideas but mostly useless to me once I crib the few things I do like; nothing I would use in its entirety.

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

I've been playing in bigmc3's Temple of Elemental Evil-centered Greyhawk campaign since 2010, so allow me to make an introduction.

Some may have met him at Gary Con or NTX. At NTX in 2016, he and I played in Allan's Friday night Greyhawk game along with Welleran, Nik and EOTB, I believe. At Gary Con last year, he played in Chainsaw's Sat night game with Allan and Guy Fullerton and possibly others here (I stopped by for a little while).

This year at Gary Con he's running five sessions, inc two of the Gary Con open (AD&D 1E) and a Greyhawk/Planescape game based on a side adventure that our party went on. After 7 years we finally defeated the Temple in a marathon session last Nov.

Zenopus Archives wrote: I've been playing in bigmc3's Temple of Elemental Evil-centered Greyhawk campaign since 2010, so allow me to make an introduction.

This year at Gary Con he's running five sessions, inc two of the Gary Con open (AD&D 1E) and a Greyhawk/Planescape game based on a side adventure that our party went on. After 7 years we finally defeated the Temple in a marathon session last Nov.

Thanks, Zach! Zach's one-handed half-orc fighter-cleric of Fharlangn named Horq will be one of the pregens for that Greyhawk game at GC!

And thanks to Ragnorakk, rredmond, EOTB, and any I may have missed for the welcomes.

Kellri wrote:

garhkal wrote:I was thinking it would have been a bit more even..

Why?

Just from personal experience.. I'd say of the games i PLAYED in, around 35-40% were FR, 30-35% were greyhawk or close, 5% were other, and the rest was homebrew realms..

Homebrew is only as good as the brewer. I prefer it to anything else, but there's a pretty wide range of quality there.

I've never run or played in a Greyhawk campaign.

I like some of TSR's other published settings.

The original Forgotten Realms boxed set and some of its supplements are solid products. I ran multiple campaigns set in the Realms in high school and college. I think what made the Realms insufferable was TSR's and later WOTC's decision to impose all sorts of shared storylines on it and use it as a so-called living setting. So from the Time of Troubles onward there was an ongoing canon that detracted from DM creativity and player agency. That was never an issue for me; I just ignored that stuff (along with the seemingly endless line of bad novels about the Realms).

I also like Krynn quite a bit. The actual Dragonlance line of modules was a railroad, of course, but I think it's unfortunate that the setting gets thrown out with that bathwater. I find the setting well done and interesting. A typical old-school sandbox could be run in Krynn; the Dragonlance series of modules and the novels don't preclude that any more than Lord of the RIngs precludes one from running a sandbox in Middle Earth. I think you just need to stay out of the War of the Lance just as you'd have to stay out of the War of the Ring.

Dark Sun is very exotic. I'd prefer to borrow lots of material from it to run a somewhat more traditional setting inspired by Dark Sun than Dark Sun itself (and modify it to use some version of OD&D as the ruleset). But I admire the setting's creativity. I also like Brom's artwork.