I'm too lazy too watch the video, but my guess is that Wizards just misphrased it, and their goal was to state that you can still use Planescape to connect your homebrewed realms to official and unofficial ones.
I don't even think they misphrased it. Or rather, I don't think it's physically possible for them to phrase anything such that somebody somewhere won't find something to get annoyed at in it, save to never say anything at all, which isn't something they can do either for obvious reasons.
I'm too lazy too watch the video, but my guess is that Wizards just misphrased it, and their goal was to state that you can still use Planescape to connect your homebrewed realms to official and unofficial ones.
I don't even think they misphrased it. Or rather, I don't think it's physically possible for them to phrase anything such that somebody somewhere won't find something to get annoyed at in it, save to never say anything at all, which isn't something they can do either for obvious reasons.
AUgh! I am having flashbacks! The pain! :p
I did say this was a long standing issue (that dates back to the original planescape release) and that it is an emotional reaction, not a rational one.
At least I am not moving goalposts about it...
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm going to do a stealth check ... Nat20 , i side step the current conversation and weave a tangent
A while ago before I got into D&D I bought a book of fantasy short stories, it was a dragonlance bool which i recently found out was a d&d campaign setting and thus part of the d&d multiverse
On a side note?! The original 3 movies are these part of official campaign. Settings or self contained worlds?
I'm going to do a stealth check ... Nat20 , i side step the current conversation and weave a tangent
A while ago before I got into D&D I bought a book of fantasy short stories, it was a dragonlance bool which i recently found out was a d&d campaign setting and thus part of the d&d multiverse
On a side note?! The original 3 movies are these part of official campaign. Settings or self contained worlds?
well...
The Writer of the first film used a very generic, vague setting that isn't canon, and was never meant to be and of the worlds at the time. It drew very limited inspiration from Mystara, but nothing specific, and was never named, to my knowledge (and certainly wasn't put to use). So no, they are not canon, they are not from an official campaign setting from the film side, at least.
They exist as their own unique point in time. It is polite to say that reception of them and even nostalgia about them is mixed.
Officially, I have no clue what Wizard's position is -- perhaps someone else will know.
In some circles of fans, mention of the films is forbidden.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
First time i saw the first film it was a very sleepy sunday channel hop sso i paid it zero attention second time round i loved it, now that i play dnd and have also played the crpgs i feel it takes the basic idea of a rag tag group of new adventures and runs with it as a loose adaptation but still not as loose as say monster hunter,battleship etc are to their games
For the last year or so (I'm not even done yet) I've taken dnd and made my own sci-fi setting (NOT Spelljammer or related to Spelljammer) that is completely outside of the dnd multiverse. I will eventually run Planescape, I know I will, but it'll be completely unrelated to this setting. It has completely different races (Which tbh are mostly modified versions of dnd races turned scifi), multiple planets, and shares no lore, deities, characters or anything else with anything that's official dnd, both past and present.
So no, my world(More like worlds, it's an entire galaxy) is not part of the dnd multiverse.
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Your friendly trans bard!
She/They pronouns
The Goddess of the Strings (thanks for the title Drummer!)
When they were first printed they weren't sold as D&D settings, they were more or less books based on a D&D campaign played some friends (At least that's how Dragonlance was sold). Up until recently (and probably with the advent of 5e) I didn't see them as hardcore realms modules and so on. Could be wrong, but I've played consistently for a long time and they never came across as such. Could be that's because I played homebrew and never really touched on commercial products. Happy to be wrong, but that's how I perceived them.
When they were first printed they weren't sold as D&D settings, they were more or less books based on a D&D campaign played some friends (At least that's how Dragonlance was sold). Up until recently (and probably with the advent of 5e) I didn't see them as hardcore realms modules and so on. Could be wrong, but I've played consistently for a long time and they never came across as such. Could be that's because I played homebrew and never really touched on commercial products. Happy to be wrong, but that's how I perceived them.
All of them were first printed as D&D settings, and officially. I didn't include the stuff after Wizards took over, those were only TSR items.
However, some notes to that:
Dragonlance was based on the unpublished world of the duo -- they had been planning to do it as a completely separate game but had not finished it it nor sold it. After the success of Ravenloft, however, TSR approached them and bought the setting.
Forgotten Realms was never officially published -- it was presented in a series of Dragon Magazine Articles over a few years, by Greenwood. It was popular enought hat TSR bought it, and put together the first real setting for it.
DL had a huge series of modules (like, 24 I think) starting with the first 12. Kara-tur was released in Oriental Adventures originally -- the single best selling book of it's era. All of those had multiple modules.
If you didn't pay attention, you might not have known about them. The primary way to spread the word was gaming shops, small bookstores, and Dragon magazine. And BBs, of course, but most people never used them.
I also didn't include the third party stuff, nor did I include the first published world of TSR (and that wasn't a D&D campaign world) -- City-State of the Invincible Overlord. I only included official, TSR released & first published D&D worlds.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
When they were first printed they weren't sold as D&D settings, they were more or less books based on a D&D campaign played some friends (At least that's how Dragonlance was sold). Up until recently (and probably with the advent of 5e) I didn't see them as hardcore realms modules and so on. Could be wrong, but I've played consistently for a long time and they never came across as such. Could be that's because I played homebrew and never really touched on commercial products. Happy to be wrong, but that's how I perceived them.
The first time Forgotten Realms was released as a paid product, it was as a D&D supplement after being bought from Ed Greenwood by TSR for what Greenwood describes as a 'nominal fee'. Before that it existed solely as his own fictional work and had never been published.
Dragonlance was commissioned from Weiss and Hickman by TSR as they wanted a more 'dragon heavy' setting following on from Greyhawk. It was a D&D setting from the inception.
Dark Sun was developed and released by TSR as a D&D setting first and foremost.
Eberron was literally the winning result of a competition to design a new D&D setting.
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
I can't be having with the great ring, alignment planes - like color coding - of good and evil, upper and lower, the blood war, the entire thing about petitioners and so on. That's not to say that there mightn't be a center of all planes that has remarkable likeness to Sigil. There might well in that Sigil (cause it might well share the name too) be something called Factions, philosopical groupings with strong opinions on the nature of the multiverse and so on.
But otherwise, I don't use anything official - but I do use certain things reminiscent of the official stuff.
Barely relevant tangent: Just the other day, I stumbled on the fact that there's a danish noble family called Ehrengard. At that moment, it struck me that my City of Æhrengraad might be less original than I've been thinking =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
I was vaguely aware of that and it seemed to be single booklet rather than a whole setting. More akin to the D&D vs Rick and Morty or Stranger Things D&D products
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
There were also Diablo based releases.
As for the topic, Elucinor started off in the multiverse, but as i developed it more, the further it drifted away from it. First I combined the concepts of the Lower Planes, Shadowfell, and Negative Energy Plane into one; then combined the Faywild and what was left of the Shadowfell into one Dreamworld; the time I made the rule that outsider spirits only have bodies on the material plane probably marked the official break from the D&D multiverse.
Elucinor and the multiverse can perhaps be reconciled, my lord for the former states that it was once a dream that became real, so perhaps the dreamer is somewhere in the Planes. Right now I don’t see myself making a campaign about that though.
With Planescape coming out, if I want to use the D&D multiverse, I’d probably make a campaign in the Outlands.
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
I was vaguely aware of that and it seemed to be single booklet rather than a whole setting. More akin to the D&D vs Rick and Morty or Stranger Things D&D products
That's an inaccurate association of Lankmahr with the modern Rick and Morty and Stranger Things content, misunderstanding/dismissing Lankmahr for what it actually was. Both AD&D and 2nd Edition Lankhmar were definitely setting books (with some additional mechanics, maybe the first TTRPG reputation/social mechanics, though I think Pendragon was already around and probably at least one other game with chivalric codes as part of the mechanics, but this would be the first one with social mechanics for "street/underworld" characters) added on. It's much more like the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer and designed as a basis for city centered campaign play (also sort of new in TTRPG time). Fritz Lieber's were significant to Appendix N, so the adaptation of the Lankhmar setting to D&D was thought at the time to be a cool thing and kinda big deal, not an IP skinning tie in like Stranger Things or Rick and Morty.
D&D also made an attempt at Conan. I think they sold well at the time, this was also the time of the Schwarzenegger movies, but they didn't have quite the campaign value that Lankhmar had. Conan had a module cycle you basically played through but there wasn't much of a tool set to go further and players were left afterward with a, "huh, so I guess that was sort of like a Conan story," whereas Lankhmar was a true setting book. It also got substantially more depth and detail in its treatment as a setting than the first treatment of Greyhawk as a setting. Critically, Lankmahr is arguably the first setting book, the D&D brand does right. (Dragonlance started as a module railroad cycle, Forgotten Realms doesn't come around as a product for a few more years, and the Gazeteers of the first Forgotten Realms product definitely take a lot of DNA from the Lankmahr book).
I think Conan and Lankmahr may be the only TSR era D&D setting products derived from pre-existing (what we now call) IPs. You could talk about AD&D's Legends and Lore book but that was more of a lore and stat block encyclopedia with a lot of "lessons learned" post publication about public domain vs copyrighted works and is a sort of key book in the history of TTRPGs migrating from a sort of fan maintained hobby to a more professionalized industry with copyright laws and such.
So actual adapted settings were an endeavor by TSR, it may have been an attempt to "grab IP" (though it likely wasn't called that in the strategic memo) in the face of a game like the Tolkien licensed or at least approved MERP. It's interesting history.
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
I was vaguely aware of that and it seemed to be single booklet rather than a whole setting. More akin to the D&D vs Rick and Morty or Stranger Things D&D products
That's an inaccurate association of Lankmahr with the modern Rick and Morty and Stranger Things content, misunderstanding/dismissing Lankmahr for what it actually was. Both AD&D and 2nd Edition Lankhmar were definitely setting books (with some additional mechanics, maybe the first TTRPG reputation/social mechanics, though I think Pendragon was already around and probably at least one other game with chivalric codes as part of the mechanics, but this would be the first one with social mechanics for "street/underworld" characters) added on. It's much more like the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer and designed as a basis for city centered campaign play (also sort of new in TTRPG time). Fritz Lieber's were significant to Appendix N, so the adaptation of the Lankhmar setting to D&D was thought at the time to be a cool thing and kinda big deal, not an IP skinning tie in like Stranger Things or Rick and Morty.
D&D also made an attempt at Conan. I think they sold well at the time, this was also the time of the Schwarzenegger movies, but they didn't have quite the campaign value that Lankhmar had. Conan had a module cycle you basically played through but there wasn't much of a tool set to go further and players were left afterward with a, "huh, so I guess that was sort of like a Conan story," whereas Lankhmar was a true setting book. It also got substantially more depth and detail in its treatment as a setting than the first treatment of Greyhawk as a setting. Critically, Lankmahr is arguably the first setting book, the D&D brand does right. (Dragonlance started as a module railroad cycle, Forgotten Realms doesn't come around as a product for a few more years, and the Gazeteers of the first Forgotten Realms product definitely take a lot of DNA from the Lankmahr book).
I think Conan and Lankmahr may be the only TSR era D&D setting products derived from pre-existing (what we now call) IPs. You could talk about AD&D's Legends and Lore book but that was more of a lore and stat block encyclopedia with a lot of "lessons learned" about public domain vs copyrighted works and is a sort of key book in the history of TTRPGs migrating from a sort of fan maintained hobby to a more professionalized industry with copyright laws and such.
So actual adapted settings were an endeavor by TSR, it may have been an attempt to "grab IP" (though it likely wasn't called that in the strategic memo) in the face of a game like the Tolkien licensed or at least approved MERP. It's interesting history.
ICE's MERP was absolutely licensed (it was a huge deal). It was that license that made people look at and into Arms Law, and that's how we ended up with critical hits, lol.
The Deities and Demigods "problem" was actually the start of it all on the TSR side -- someone explained to them how they could do it, and at the time, there wasn't much awareness of TTRPG, so licenses were cheap. Melnibone had already been licensed to Chaosium, and the D&D mythos created major problems across a lot of the industry. Moorcock had nasty things to say about it for about five years. I keep my prized Deities and Demigods title, lol. It is a first edition, with all the original entries.
Strictly speaking, the first external IP was City-State, but by the timeframe we are now dealing with, it had moved over to Judge's Guild (who had licensed out several rights to create "official" D&D stuff, and then lost it). City state was based on Tekumel, and was arguably the best written setting of its time -- and many felt it held that title for a long time because of the depth of work that the author put into it. Thankfully, the author's "side interests" essentially killed it as a viable product years later, but it was licensing that did it in at TSR ad moved it to JG. City State was published in 1974 - at the birth of TSR.
The rest is pretty close (it was DL before Lankhmar), and the Red Sonja licensing came through after the Conan stuff sold well enough.
We could mention the SF Alternity, the prior form that was Gamma World, and Star Frontiers, but those are all SF, not fantasy.
This is sticking to the TSR era, as well, not the WotC era.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
I was vaguely aware of that and it seemed to be single booklet rather than a whole setting. More akin to the D&D vs Rick and Morty or Stranger Things D&D products
That's an inaccurate association of Lankmahr with the modern Rick and Morty and Stranger Things content, misunderstanding/dismissing Lankmahr for what it actually was. Both AD&D and 2nd Edition Lankhmar were definitely setting books (with some additional mechanics, maybe the first TTRPG reputation/social mechanics, though I think Pendragon was already around and probably at least one other game with chivalric codes as part of the mechanics, but this would be the first one with social mechanics for "street/underworld" characters) added on. It's much more like the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer and designed as a basis for city centered campaign play (also sort of new in TTRPG time). Fritz Lieber's were significant to Appendix N, so the adaptation of the Lankhmar setting to D&D was thought at the time to be a cool thing and kinda big deal, not an IP skinning tie in like Stranger Things or Rick and Morty.
D&D also made an attempt at Conan. I think they sold well at the time, this was also the time of the Schwarzenegger movies, but they didn't have quite the campaign value that Lankhmar had. Conan had a module cycle you basically played through but there wasn't much of a tool set to go further and players were left afterward with a, "huh, so I guess that was sort of like a Conan story," whereas Lankhmar was a true setting book. It also got substantially more depth and detail in its treatment as a setting than the first treatment of Greyhawk as a setting. Critically, Lankmahr is arguably the first setting book, the D&D brand does right. (Dragonlance started as a module railroad cycle, Forgotten Realms doesn't come around as a product for a few more years, and the Gazeteers of the first Forgotten Realms product definitely take a lot of DNA from the Lankmahr book).
I think Conan and Lankmahr may be the only TSR era D&D setting products derived from pre-existing (what we now call) IPs. You could talk about AD&D's Legends and Lore book but that was more of a lore and stat block encyclopedia with a lot of "lessons learned" post publication about public domain vs copyrighted works and is a sort of key book in the history of TTRPGs migrating from a sort of fan maintained hobby to a more professionalized industry with copyright laws and such.
So actual adapted settings were an endeavor by TSR, it may have been an attempt to "grab IP" (though it likely wasn't called that in the strategic memo) in the face of a game like the Tolkien licensed or at least approved MERP. It's interesting history.
It was not my intent to "dismiss" the product in any way, simply drawing the most apt comparison to the current edition. Please do not read anything into my comment beyond "this is what my awareness of the product extended to"
Come to think of it my current campaign is a prequel/sequel/side story to lost mines(which i've not yet run but i do know it's set in phandalin and shares a few npcs) i also played a oneshot last night where another dm reworked the king of the hill encounter into another story
I would have never guessed so many people were running their own game world. I have a hard time imagining anything that's better than the official campaign settings and every group I have played in runs official campaign settings so I just assumed that's what everyone was doing. Kudos to all of you.
I would have never guessed so many people were running their own game world.
It's consistent with WotC's surveys, and it's probably more prevalent in those people who've been playing longer, who I suspect are overrepresented on the forums.
I have a hard time imagining anything that's better than the official campaign settings and every group I have played in runs official campaign settings so I just assumed that's what everyone was doing.
That's... very much a matter of taste. They can easily be much more completely developed, than a homebrew, but sometimes all the development doesn't fit what you/your group want out of the game, and it's easier to toss it all and start afresh.
I don't even think they misphrased it. Or rather, I don't think it's physically possible for them to phrase anything such that somebody somewhere won't find something to get annoyed at in it, save to never say anything at all, which isn't something they can do either for obvious reasons.
AUgh! I am having flashbacks! The pain! :p
I did say this was a long standing issue (that dates back to the original planescape release) and that it is an emotional reaction, not a rational one.
At least I am not moving goalposts about it...
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm going to do a stealth check ... Nat20 , i side step the current conversation and weave a tangent
A while ago before I got into D&D I bought a book of fantasy short stories, it was a dragonlance bool which i recently found out was a d&d campaign setting and thus part of the d&d multiverse
On a side note?! The original 3 movies are these part of official campaign. Settings or self contained worlds?
in a hole in the ground you notice a halfling
well...
The Writer of the first film used a very generic, vague setting that isn't canon, and was never meant to be and of the worlds at the time. It drew very limited inspiration from Mystara, but nothing specific, and was never named, to my knowledge (and certainly wasn't put to use). So no, they are not canon, they are not from an official campaign setting from the film side, at least.
They exist as their own unique point in time. It is polite to say that reception of them and even nostalgia about them is mixed.
Officially, I have no clue what Wizard's position is -- perhaps someone else will know.
In some circles of fans, mention of the films is forbidden.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
First time i saw the first film it was a very sleepy sunday channel hop sso i paid it zero attention second time round i loved it, now that i play dnd and have also played the crpgs i feel it takes the basic idea of a rag tag group of new adventures and runs with it as a loose adaptation but still not as loose as say monster hunter,battleship etc are to their games
in a hole in the ground you notice a halfling
For the last year or so (I'm not even done yet) I've taken dnd and made my own sci-fi setting (NOT Spelljammer or related to Spelljammer) that is completely outside of the dnd multiverse. I will eventually run Planescape, I know I will, but it'll be completely unrelated to this setting. It has completely different races (Which tbh are mostly modified versions of dnd races turned scifi), multiple planets, and shares no lore, deities, characters or anything else with anything that's official dnd, both past and present.
So no, my world(More like worlds, it's an entire galaxy) is not part of the dnd multiverse.
Your friendly trans bard!
She/They pronouns
The Goddess of the Strings (thanks for the title Drummer!)
When they were first printed they weren't sold as D&D settings, they were more or less books based on a D&D campaign played some friends (At least that's how Dragonlance was sold). Up until recently (and probably with the advent of 5e) I didn't see them as hardcore realms modules and so on. Could be wrong, but I've played consistently for a long time and they never came across as such. Could be that's because I played homebrew and never really touched on commercial products. Happy to be wrong, but that's how I perceived them.
All of them were first printed as D&D settings, and officially. I didn't include the stuff after Wizards took over, those were only TSR items.
However, some notes to that:
Dragonlance was based on the unpublished world of the duo -- they had been planning to do it as a completely separate game but had not finished it it nor sold it. After the success of Ravenloft, however, TSR approached them and bought the setting.
Forgotten Realms was never officially published -- it was presented in a series of Dragon Magazine Articles over a few years, by Greenwood. It was popular enought hat TSR bought it, and put together the first real setting for it.
DL had a huge series of modules (like, 24 I think) starting with the first 12. Kara-tur was released in Oriental Adventures originally -- the single best selling book of it's era. All of those had multiple modules.
If you didn't pay attention, you might not have known about them. The primary way to spread the word was gaming shops, small bookstores, and Dragon magazine. And BBs, of course, but most people never used them.
I also didn't include the third party stuff, nor did I include the first published world of TSR (and that wasn't a D&D campaign world) -- City-State of the Invincible Overlord. I only included official, TSR released & first published D&D worlds.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The first time Forgotten Realms was released as a paid product, it was as a D&D supplement after being bought from Ed Greenwood by TSR for what Greenwood describes as a 'nominal fee'. Before that it existed solely as his own fictional work and had never been published.
Dragonlance was commissioned from Weiss and Hickman by TSR as they wanted a more 'dragon heavy' setting following on from Greyhawk. It was a D&D setting from the inception.
Dark Sun was developed and released by TSR as a D&D setting first and foremost.
Eberron was literally the winning result of a competition to design a new D&D setting.
I don't know of any official (published by TSR or Wizards of the Coast) campaign setting that is adapted from a non-D&D media product. Even the recent Critical Role books are themselves just official releases of a third party setting.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I can't be having with the great ring, alignment planes - like color coding - of good and evil, upper and lower, the blood war, the entire thing about petitioners and so on. That's not to say that there mightn't be a center of all planes that has remarkable likeness to Sigil. There might well in that Sigil (cause it might well share the name too) be something called Factions, philosopical groupings with strong opinions on the nature of the multiverse and so on.
But otherwise, I don't use anything official - but I do use certain things reminiscent of the official stuff.
Barely relevant tangent: Just the other day, I stumbled on the fact that there's a danish noble family called Ehrengard. At that moment, it struck me that my City of Æhrengraad might be less original than I've been thinking =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
They did a Lankhmar setting back in the day IIRC.
(Back in the late TSR days, I'm surprised that they didn't try a Buck Rogers setting. :)
I was vaguely aware of that and it seemed to be single booklet rather than a whole setting. More akin to the D&D vs Rick and Morty or Stranger Things D&D products
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
There were also Diablo based releases.
As for the topic, Elucinor started off in the multiverse, but as i developed it more, the further it drifted away from it. First I combined the concepts of the Lower Planes, Shadowfell, and Negative Energy Plane into one; then combined the Faywild and what was left of the Shadowfell into one Dreamworld; the time I made the rule that outsider spirits only have bodies on the material plane probably marked the official break from the D&D multiverse.
Elucinor and the multiverse can perhaps be reconciled, my lord for the former states that it was once a dream that became real, so perhaps the dreamer is somewhere in the Planes. Right now I don’t see myself making a campaign about that though.
With Planescape coming out, if I want to use the D&D multiverse, I’d probably make a campaign in the Outlands.
That's an inaccurate association of Lankmahr with the modern Rick and Morty and Stranger Things content, misunderstanding/dismissing Lankmahr for what it actually was. Both AD&D and 2nd Edition Lankhmar were definitely setting books (with some additional mechanics, maybe the first TTRPG reputation/social mechanics, though I think Pendragon was already around and probably at least one other game with chivalric codes as part of the mechanics, but this would be the first one with social mechanics for "street/underworld" characters) added on. It's much more like the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer and designed as a basis for city centered campaign play (also sort of new in TTRPG time). Fritz Lieber's were significant to Appendix N, so the adaptation of the Lankhmar setting to D&D was thought at the time to be a cool thing and kinda big deal, not an IP skinning tie in like Stranger Things or Rick and Morty.
D&D also made an attempt at Conan. I think they sold well at the time, this was also the time of the Schwarzenegger movies, but they didn't have quite the campaign value that Lankhmar had. Conan had a module cycle you basically played through but there wasn't much of a tool set to go further and players were left afterward with a, "huh, so I guess that was sort of like a Conan story," whereas Lankhmar was a true setting book. It also got substantially more depth and detail in its treatment as a setting than the first treatment of Greyhawk as a setting. Critically, Lankmahr is arguably the first setting book, the D&D brand does right. (Dragonlance started as a module railroad cycle, Forgotten Realms doesn't come around as a product for a few more years, and the Gazeteers of the first Forgotten Realms product definitely take a lot of DNA from the Lankmahr book).
I think Conan and Lankmahr may be the only TSR era D&D setting products derived from pre-existing (what we now call) IPs. You could talk about AD&D's Legends and Lore book but that was more of a lore and stat block encyclopedia with a lot of "lessons learned" post publication about public domain vs copyrighted works and is a sort of key book in the history of TTRPGs migrating from a sort of fan maintained hobby to a more professionalized industry with copyright laws and such.
So actual adapted settings were an endeavor by TSR, it may have been an attempt to "grab IP" (though it likely wasn't called that in the strategic memo) in the face of a game like the Tolkien licensed or at least approved MERP. It's interesting history.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
ICE's MERP was absolutely licensed (it was a huge deal). It was that license that made people look at and into Arms Law, and that's how we ended up with critical hits, lol.
The Deities and Demigods "problem" was actually the start of it all on the TSR side -- someone explained to them how they could do it, and at the time, there wasn't much awareness of TTRPG, so licenses were cheap. Melnibone had already been licensed to Chaosium, and the D&D mythos created major problems across a lot of the industry. Moorcock had nasty things to say about it for about five years. I keep my prized Deities and Demigods title, lol. It is a first edition, with all the original entries.
Strictly speaking, the first external IP was City-State, but by the timeframe we are now dealing with, it had moved over to Judge's Guild (who had licensed out several rights to create "official" D&D stuff, and then lost it). City state was based on Tekumel, and was arguably the best written setting of its time -- and many felt it held that title for a long time because of the depth of work that the author put into it. Thankfully, the author's "side interests" essentially killed it as a viable product years later, but it was licensing that did it in at TSR ad moved it to JG. City State was published in 1974 - at the birth of TSR.
The rest is pretty close (it was DL before Lankhmar), and the Red Sonja licensing came through after the Conan stuff sold well enough.
We could mention the SF Alternity, the prior form that was Gamma World, and Star Frontiers, but those are all SF, not fantasy.
This is sticking to the TSR era, as well, not the WotC era.
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It was not my intent to "dismiss" the product in any way, simply drawing the most apt comparison to the current edition. Please do not read anything into my comment beyond "this is what my awareness of the product extended to"
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Come to think of it my current campaign is a prequel/sequel/side story to lost mines(which i've not yet run but i do know it's set in phandalin and shares a few npcs) i also played a oneshot last night where another dm reworked the king of the hill encounter into another story
in a hole in the ground you notice a halfling
I would have never guessed so many people were running their own game world. I have a hard time imagining anything that's better than the official campaign settings and every group I have played in runs official campaign settings so I just assumed that's what everyone was doing. Kudos to all of you.
It's consistent with WotC's surveys, and it's probably more prevalent in those people who've been playing longer, who I suspect are overrepresented on the forums.
That's... very much a matter of taste. They can easily be much more completely developed, than a homebrew, but sometimes all the development doesn't fit what you/your group want out of the game, and it's easier to toss it all and start afresh.
And some people just enjoy worldbuilding.
Agreed ^