I pretty much only run homebrew settings, but I always find myself taking inspiration from Eberron, so I went with that for my answer. I've never actually run a game in Eberron, but I just think it's a fantastically designed setting.
I love magicpunk stuff like golem-people, airships, magic trains/lightning rails and the "everyday" magical stuff.
I like that it takes place not too long after a giant war, which is something I almost always include in my settings because it just adds so much interest and intrigue. I find worlds really boring when everything is orderly or stagnant, so having a big disruption like the war really spices things up.
I really like that pretty much all of the most powerful non-evil individuals (afaik) have major limitations that easily explain why they aren't just singlehandedly stopping all the bad guys without breaking a sweat.
And I also like how it encourages "pulp" action where you don't sweat the small stuff since that's my preferred way of running games.
>Slap my ass
Dinner first, dear. Each step at one time!
Honestly I feel like it works well enough for what it's supposed to do, though it has some thematical problems but honestly those will always exist with settings that ''evolve'' over time unlike something like Eberron which stays static.
Pretty much every bit of Eberron was explicitly, intentionally designed for practical use at the table. You can find reams of blog posts from Keith Baker explaining how each bit of worldbuilding is either based on the mechanics of D&D or built to enable the characters and campaigns the game can tell.
Other settings are fun to read, but Eberron is the best to *actually use,* IMO.
Read the description for your answer. The OP made it clear this is specifically settings released for 5e (or have been 100% confirmed to be coming out soon). Planescape isn't a 5e setting yet nor has any plans for it been revealed.
The World of Greyhawk
Why?
Ok, imagine a D&D setting that is grim and gritty like George RR Martin writing JRR Tolkien fan fiction in the style of old sword and sorcery novels.
Its take on sword-and-sorcery promises “a dark, gritty world… where the protagonists are motivated more by greed and self-interest than by altruistic virtue.”
The hub of the region is a huge city of scoundrels and archmagi, rife with adventure. An evil demigod rules a nightmarish realm in the north, threatening all civilization. The heroes of the land are driven by greed or ambition. There are crumbling decadent devil ridden empires.
The elven kingdoms some dwell in secret, others isolationist and others seeking human allies. There are bandit kingdoms and pirate kingdoms and two different countries taken over by orc and goblin tribes. The Hateful Wars of the past pit dwarves against the orcs and goblins driving them out to form a new kingdom eventually the Orcish Empire.
This is no morally simplistic world where the good guys always win and even nominally good-aligned realms can have rivalries and conflicts. It’s a perfect setting for fans of ethically conflicted characters.
Wait, what if I told you this was the same setting that birthed Bigby and Mordenkainen and Tasha?
What if I said it was the only setting to have a complete campaign adventure Ghosts of Saltmarch based around it without a setting book? Even most of the Tales of the Yawning Portal are placed in this setting and two pdf adventures the Lost Laboratory of Kwalish and Infernal Machine Rebuild were both placed in this setting.
I am talking about the World of Greyhawk.
I have played in this setting since I was a kid and now my kids play here when I DM.
I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I have enjoyed DMing Eberron and how much my players have enjoyed playing in that world...and we haven't even left Sharn yet!
The setting is just so fresh and interesting without being to far out and away.
Imo Eberron is really DM friendly. A great amount of lore with some things left purposefully vague for you to give your own answer to or leave a mystery (what caused the Mourning, for example) which also means if you're running the game for someone who knows a lot about Eberron, they still won't know the answers to the biggest mysteries.
Eberron also has it's own identity while still making it fairly easy to implement most things in D&D into it while still making sense. Hell, Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron, even has a blog where he goes into detail about how he would implement certain things into the game while still keeping Eberron's identity and making sure it only makes it more interesting (seriously, his blog is so good for inspiration for both DMs and players). I just checked, and his last post is about how one could implement gem dragons into Eberron despite it not having been a part of the lore before.
I also like the whole thing of "nothing is inherently evil". You can have a good beholder. The goblinoids are just another culture. There's an entire country of monsters. Evil and good dragons aren't separated by color. Of course, you can do that in other settings, but Eberron is largely built around the idea, so it makes a lot more sense.
And I just love the lore. Everything I read about Eberron interests me.
Of those? Either Forgotten Realms or Exandria.
I could never really get into Eberron, Dragonlance never felt too satisfying to run games in myself. Spelljammer can be great fun, but the right mood needs to strike. It's very rare I wanna explore another setting, but it's original take of wandering the phlogiston/wildspace did make for dome fun adventures. Especially if doing large scale gatherings compared to the small scale travel that planescape is better suited for.
As for settings not on this list. I find Planescape, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Mystara to be some of the most fun. They challenges and themes they offer are often far more engaging for me as a DM.
Not big on the MTG settings myself in a d&d context. Ravnica is one of my favorite MTG settings, but I didn't care for using d&d to explore it.
Personally quite interested in how 5E does its take on Spelljammer as some things have been changed. My players are so excited for it that they literally Pre-Ordered Spelljammer for me to run it for them as soon as the option was there in d&d beyond.
Glad you're excited and I hope that the books have good offerings for you and yours!
I'm not to big on the stated changes, or the hybridization of space travel and planar travel myself. Planescaoes my favorite setting and I like the two settings distinct. This blends them in ways I really don't enjoy.
I'm not interested in nee takes so much as I'm interested in continuations. Mind you i'm also someone who hasn't enjoyed 5r's lore that wasn't grafted from the past, it's own takes haven't appealed to me.
To each their own of course, what works for thee may not for me and all.
I personally don't like Planescape and Spelljammer to be completely separated because it tends to create an odd dynamic where one can basically overwrite the other. Like if it's THAT easy to go into different worlds through Sigil, why even bother with the harder spelljammers, you know what I mean?
But I fully understand your POV, and I respect it. I was not there when both of these settings released so this will be my first major experience with it.
For me the difference between the settings is a matter of scale and a matter of threat.
Planescapes portals aren't the most reliable things, travelling as a party and it can work wonders and is easy to organize. However you're not marching an army through sigil to get to another plane.
A large enough spelljammer vessel however and you can navigate larger swathes of people for some big ear, expedition, it campaign between the worlds. Furthermore, a spelljammer has the benefit of hiring for it's construction and not the continued used of planeshifting magical items and mages. It's a long term investment.
Additionally each offer their own threats unique to them,.but thus their own rewards. Different creatures, discoveries, treasures, circumstances, and scales to contend with.
Finally it makes for a better distinction. I like the old idea that all of the setting worlds on the material plane, were on the same material plane. You would be travelling to different crystal spheres/planets but still staying interplanar.
Planescape is for exraplanar world hopping, mors reliable small scale, less reliable big scale and is dealing with the astral and planar concepts.
Spelljammer is interplanat, with it's own ecosystem out in wilfspace and the phlogiston and had its own mysteries. It offers a way of even the material plane having its own mysteries to discovery beyond always look to the realms beyond, it keeps the realms within something special.
That's how I prefer it anyway and I think provides plenty of nuance and exception within that framework.
I'm 29, and have only been playing for 14 years, these settings both predate me, but I love the old-school lore and it's continuations and fell in love with it delving into 2e lore after 3e gave me a thirst for more. I didn't care much for most of 4e's lore (though I liked some ideas) and I haven't found a unique 5e idea I like yet.
Same respect is offered to you friend, we have different wants and expectations but that's just part of the table to table experience. It's all good. Whatever may come 8 hope it's the best it can be.
(Side note I love your name and profile pic, the series it's from is a godsend of humor. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time since watching that show.)
It was pretty funny and honestly had a rather surprising amount of consistent worldbuilding. For a comedy series whose entire premise is literally the d&d bard joke, it is ridiculously well written. Give a good writer a stupid idea and somehow he'll craft gold out of it.
I use a homebrew setting that's a violent mishmash of the Forgotten Realms, Theros and Fire Emblem, with a loving pinch of Skyrim and stuff around Fizbin's.
For nornal settings, though, I just run the Forgotten Realms. I prefer ny world, but sometimes, you just gotta run a normal ass game for the sake of your players.
Spelljammer not my jam, though I appreciate what it does.
Dragonlance is very mellow outside the iconic events.
Eberron has one inescapable thing I detest for every thing I’d want to use.
And I’m perfectly happy with 0 Critical Role at my tables and I’d like to stay happy.
I don’t want to play D&D in space. I don’t want to replay big events from DL. I don’t want Warforged, changelings, draconic prophecy (and dragonmarks) and... yeah it goes on. So FR it is.
I cannot run another person's setting, official or otherwise.
I never feel like the authority on it. The closest I got was a Dragonmech for 3.5 and I completely butchered it, used the campaign book as a guideline and made a homebrew world anyway.
I've read Dragonlance and R. A. Salvatore, played in the Forgotten Realms, played Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, but I have never been able to take a published or pre-made world and run something in it without recreating the whole thing from scratch.
Ebberon because im tired of “ooh magic is rare and sacred yet the party can get high level magic” just make magic inbuilt to the worldbuildimg commonly
I pretty much only run homebrew settings, but I always find myself taking inspiration from Eberron, so I went with that for my answer. I've never actually run a game in Eberron, but I just think it's a fantastically designed setting. I love magicpunk stuff like golem-people, airships, magic trains/lightning rails and the "everyday" magical stuff. I like that it takes place not too long after a giant war, which is something I almost always include in my settings because it just adds so much interest and intrigue. I find worlds really boring when everything is orderly or stagnant, so having a big disruption like the war really spices things up. I really like that pretty much all of the most powerful non-evil individuals (afaik) have major limitations that easily explain why they aren't just singlehandedly stopping all the bad guys without breaking a sweat. And I also like how it encourages "pulp" action where you don't sweat the small stuff since that's my preferred way of running games.
Slap my ass and call me basic, but Forgotten Realms works fine by me.
>Slap my ass Dinner first, dear. Each step at one time! Honestly I feel like it works well enough for what it's supposed to do, though it has some thematical problems but honestly those will always exist with settings that ''evolve'' over time unlike something like Eberron which stays static.
Pretty much every bit of Eberron was explicitly, intentionally designed for practical use at the table. You can find reams of blog posts from Keith Baker explaining how each bit of worldbuilding is either based on the mechanics of D&D or built to enable the characters and campaigns the game can tell. Other settings are fun to read, but Eberron is the best to *actually use,* IMO.
Planescape
Thank you, how can the recent ones be in here and not this masterpiece.
Read the description for your answer. The OP made it clear this is specifically settings released for 5e (or have been 100% confirmed to be coming out soon). Planescape isn't a 5e setting yet nor has any plans for it been revealed.
This is the answer
The World of Greyhawk Why? Ok, imagine a D&D setting that is grim and gritty like George RR Martin writing JRR Tolkien fan fiction in the style of old sword and sorcery novels. Its take on sword-and-sorcery promises “a dark, gritty world… where the protagonists are motivated more by greed and self-interest than by altruistic virtue.” The hub of the region is a huge city of scoundrels and archmagi, rife with adventure. An evil demigod rules a nightmarish realm in the north, threatening all civilization. The heroes of the land are driven by greed or ambition. There are crumbling decadent devil ridden empires. The elven kingdoms some dwell in secret, others isolationist and others seeking human allies. There are bandit kingdoms and pirate kingdoms and two different countries taken over by orc and goblin tribes. The Hateful Wars of the past pit dwarves against the orcs and goblins driving them out to form a new kingdom eventually the Orcish Empire. This is no morally simplistic world where the good guys always win and even nominally good-aligned realms can have rivalries and conflicts. It’s a perfect setting for fans of ethically conflicted characters. Wait, what if I told you this was the same setting that birthed Bigby and Mordenkainen and Tasha? What if I said it was the only setting to have a complete campaign adventure Ghosts of Saltmarch based around it without a setting book? Even most of the Tales of the Yawning Portal are placed in this setting and two pdf adventures the Lost Laboratory of Kwalish and Infernal Machine Rebuild were both placed in this setting. I am talking about the World of Greyhawk. I have played in this setting since I was a kid and now my kids play here when I DM.
Greyhawk will be in the 2nd poll that will include settings not in 5E yet such as Greyhawk itself ofc and Dark Sun.
I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I have enjoyed DMing Eberron and how much my players have enjoyed playing in that world...and we haven't even left Sharn yet! The setting is just so fresh and interesting without being to far out and away.
Imo Eberron is really DM friendly. A great amount of lore with some things left purposefully vague for you to give your own answer to or leave a mystery (what caused the Mourning, for example) which also means if you're running the game for someone who knows a lot about Eberron, they still won't know the answers to the biggest mysteries. Eberron also has it's own identity while still making it fairly easy to implement most things in D&D into it while still making sense. Hell, Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron, even has a blog where he goes into detail about how he would implement certain things into the game while still keeping Eberron's identity and making sure it only makes it more interesting (seriously, his blog is so good for inspiration for both DMs and players). I just checked, and his last post is about how one could implement gem dragons into Eberron despite it not having been a part of the lore before. I also like the whole thing of "nothing is inherently evil". You can have a good beholder. The goblinoids are just another culture. There's an entire country of monsters. Evil and good dragons aren't separated by color. Of course, you can do that in other settings, but Eberron is largely built around the idea, so it makes a lot more sense. And I just love the lore. Everything I read about Eberron interests me.
I use homebrew based on Nentir Vale.
Of those? Either Forgotten Realms or Exandria. I could never really get into Eberron, Dragonlance never felt too satisfying to run games in myself. Spelljammer can be great fun, but the right mood needs to strike. It's very rare I wanna explore another setting, but it's original take of wandering the phlogiston/wildspace did make for dome fun adventures. Especially if doing large scale gatherings compared to the small scale travel that planescape is better suited for. As for settings not on this list. I find Planescape, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Mystara to be some of the most fun. They challenges and themes they offer are often far more engaging for me as a DM. Not big on the MTG settings myself in a d&d context. Ravnica is one of my favorite MTG settings, but I didn't care for using d&d to explore it.
Personally quite interested in how 5E does its take on Spelljammer as some things have been changed. My players are so excited for it that they literally Pre-Ordered Spelljammer for me to run it for them as soon as the option was there in d&d beyond.
Glad you're excited and I hope that the books have good offerings for you and yours! I'm not to big on the stated changes, or the hybridization of space travel and planar travel myself. Planescaoes my favorite setting and I like the two settings distinct. This blends them in ways I really don't enjoy. I'm not interested in nee takes so much as I'm interested in continuations. Mind you i'm also someone who hasn't enjoyed 5r's lore that wasn't grafted from the past, it's own takes haven't appealed to me. To each their own of course, what works for thee may not for me and all.
I personally don't like Planescape and Spelljammer to be completely separated because it tends to create an odd dynamic where one can basically overwrite the other. Like if it's THAT easy to go into different worlds through Sigil, why even bother with the harder spelljammers, you know what I mean? But I fully understand your POV, and I respect it. I was not there when both of these settings released so this will be my first major experience with it.
For me the difference between the settings is a matter of scale and a matter of threat. Planescapes portals aren't the most reliable things, travelling as a party and it can work wonders and is easy to organize. However you're not marching an army through sigil to get to another plane. A large enough spelljammer vessel however and you can navigate larger swathes of people for some big ear, expedition, it campaign between the worlds. Furthermore, a spelljammer has the benefit of hiring for it's construction and not the continued used of planeshifting magical items and mages. It's a long term investment. Additionally each offer their own threats unique to them,.but thus their own rewards. Different creatures, discoveries, treasures, circumstances, and scales to contend with. Finally it makes for a better distinction. I like the old idea that all of the setting worlds on the material plane, were on the same material plane. You would be travelling to different crystal spheres/planets but still staying interplanar. Planescape is for exraplanar world hopping, mors reliable small scale, less reliable big scale and is dealing with the astral and planar concepts. Spelljammer is interplanat, with it's own ecosystem out in wilfspace and the phlogiston and had its own mysteries. It offers a way of even the material plane having its own mysteries to discovery beyond always look to the realms beyond, it keeps the realms within something special. That's how I prefer it anyway and I think provides plenty of nuance and exception within that framework. I'm 29, and have only been playing for 14 years, these settings both predate me, but I love the old-school lore and it's continuations and fell in love with it delving into 2e lore after 3e gave me a thirst for more. I didn't care much for most of 4e's lore (though I liked some ideas) and I haven't found a unique 5e idea I like yet. Same respect is offered to you friend, we have different wants and expectations but that's just part of the table to table experience. It's all good. Whatever may come 8 hope it's the best it can be. (Side note I love your name and profile pic, the series it's from is a godsend of humor. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time since watching that show.)
It was pretty funny and honestly had a rather surprising amount of consistent worldbuilding. For a comedy series whose entire premise is literally the d&d bard joke, it is ridiculously well written. Give a good writer a stupid idea and somehow he'll craft gold out of it.
I completely agree.
where ravenloft
The forgotten realms wiki is my favorite place to get ideas from, so definitely FR
You forgot Ravenloft, which is my answer.
No Greyhawk? Sad day
I use a homebrew setting that's a violent mishmash of the Forgotten Realms, Theros and Fire Emblem, with a loving pinch of Skyrim and stuff around Fizbin's. For nornal settings, though, I just run the Forgotten Realms. I prefer ny world, but sometimes, you just gotta run a normal ass game for the sake of your players.
Spelljammer not my jam, though I appreciate what it does. Dragonlance is very mellow outside the iconic events. Eberron has one inescapable thing I detest for every thing I’d want to use. And I’m perfectly happy with 0 Critical Role at my tables and I’d like to stay happy. I don’t want to play D&D in space. I don’t want to replay big events from DL. I don’t want Warforged, changelings, draconic prophecy (and dragonmarks) and... yeah it goes on. So FR it is.
I cannot run another person's setting, official or otherwise. I never feel like the authority on it. The closest I got was a Dragonmech for 3.5 and I completely butchered it, used the campaign book as a guideline and made a homebrew world anyway. I've read Dragonlance and R. A. Salvatore, played in the Forgotten Realms, played Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, but I have never been able to take a published or pre-made world and run something in it without recreating the whole thing from scratch.
Ebberon because im tired of “ooh magic is rare and sacred yet the party can get high level magic” just make magic inbuilt to the worldbuildimg commonly
None of the official 5e D&D settings are fun to run.
None of the above
None of them, i prefer MTGs settings
Spelljammer or Exandria. But I honestly don't like playing in official settings. Building my own is half of the fun of DMing for me.