Dungeons and Dragons Settings

Also love Al Qadim, Red Steel, Birthright, and of course Planescape!

And Ravenloft! Even Maztica!

I only got to play Al Qadim once but loved the lore.
I also enjoy the underdark as a setting.

I was in one Arabian Bazaar themed game as a rogue, it was great. Completed our first two missions without ever actually fighting anything but the threat was always just around a corner or in a dark corner. Really fine GMing.

Maztica is Meso-American themed or unique to itself?

Not as big a fan of real dark settings like Ravenloft or the Underdark from my limited experience with them. Never even heard of Birthright or Red Steel and a cursory web search doesn't convey the flavor.

Planescape is a setting I have loved since I played the PC game Planescape Torment

Not listed, but Ravenloft is my #1 by far.

I have an opinion on homebrew. I've played hundreeds of hours at the table games in two different homebrew settings. That was a wonderful. DM (and group of DMs in other case) invested a lot to make players feel like home in their settings. One DM even did a one-shot setting intro session and asked for feedback on setting before we started the full game.

But I've seen too much games here on PbP where I as a player felt like alien in the settings. I'm just not sure PbP is good platform to help player understand settings. It didn't stop me from having fun in some of the games, but I always wanted to feel more comfortable understanding what should be relations between races, social and economical groups, what's citizen attitude to current ruler of the region, to legislation, and what not

I was just re-shelving last week and found my Al-Qadim stuff, lovely boxed sets! Planescape and Dark Sun ranks very high for me, although Planescape feels less special now thanks to how we've changed our views about the multiverse. I never managed to make the Birthright kingdom mechanics work, but its idea of singular monsters I thought was groundbreaking in its time.

Just adding to the Planescape love train. Carry on.

What can change the nature of a man?

Really gotta get back and finish the planewalker stuff, maybe run a PS game sometime.

Add me to the Ravenloft fanclub. After that, I'm not partial. I like D&D lore in general.

I made a Planescape character for a game that never started. It was supposed to be a more humorous take on Planescape, so I made a Live, Love, Laugh Doombringer.

I really disliked Planescape for some odd reason; it just didn't resonate with me. However, I got my money's worth out of Ravenloft and Spelljammer! I enjoyed Al-Qadim and Oriental Adventures, and never really got to give Birthright a proper shake. Greyhawk is the setting I cut my teeth on, so it has the nostalgia factor going for it, but Forgotten Realms was enjoyable as well. Dark Sun; meh, I could take it or leave it. Dragonlance was a perennial favorite.

I've always wanted to try out Dark Sun and Birthright, Dark Sun because of the Conan The Barbarian tone and more Sword And Sorcery tone it has compared to the high fantasy of Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and Birthright because it really did try something new with its focus on player run settlements and kingdoms.

I also think the setting has enough classical fantasy elements to be familiar but it also has enough new things to interest me, plus there's also a non zero percent change George RR Martin was "inspired" by the Iron Throne within Birthright for his own novels, and that's just funny.

A sentient Orb of Annihilation? That's an idea I love, and you're cool for coming up with it.

I only dipped a toe into Spelljammer when it suddenly appeared in a campaign I was in. But I really enjoyed it and wish more people ran it.

You forgot Planescape (my personal favorite)!

Also enjoy Birthright.

Back when we were playing 1e, and my brother wanted to play a drow, he told me that his ambition was to overthrow and replace Lolth as the Queen of Spiders. He labored under this premise for the entire time it took to go through T1-4, A1-4, G1-3, D1-3, and Q1. When the party was at the edge of the final conflict and had Lolth on the ropes, I told him that he had to make his choice. Sacrifice his companions and become the new Queen, or save them and give up any chance of it. He chose to save his companions. They left Lolth, barely alive, to be healed by her handmaidens.

Jump ahead 15 years (real time, about 30 years game time). The players are now playing the children of the original characters. Lolth is back, healed up, and ready for a fight in Queen of Spiders II: Black Queen's Gambit! I reintroduced his original drow character, now a dedicated drow hunter, as an NPC to bring them into the scenario.

Lolth, still smarting from her defeat, has set her sights on Oerth once again, and she has no intent of letting these young upstarts spoil her carefully laid plans! She found a crystal sphere called Darkspace, which was filled with drow elves, and built an armada to take not just Greyspace, but Realmspace as well! The campaign was to take place across three crystal spheres and on several worlds!

Sadly, time just did not allow us to see its completion. We had barely gotten started when I joined the service and moved to California from Mississippi (this was pre-Internet, mind you), and by the time I made my way back home, the bulk of the players had gone on to other things as well.

Shoutouts to Mystara, Nentir Vale, and Ravnica!

I like the forgotten realms