Hi,
Well, There isnt any campaign seeting book yet, only PHB, Monster Manual and DMG next. Well, how do your play D&D? In what world? If there isnt any campaign setting book yet.
Advices?
What CAmpaign Setting will be published as your think?
Thanks,
Wiskeim
While my current campaign is set in the Forgotten Realm(which I know almost nothing about), I mostly build my own worlds. Sometimes I reuse other campaign locations, and change them dramatically; Undermountain became an underground metropolis with a harbor called Waterdeep, Fallcrest became a river habor town that was once part of a massive city that an ancient meteor fell on and split(the other half of the old city became Highcrest, a place of wealth and power, and inbetween the two a dwarven city was built into the cliff and called Undercrest), and Greyhawk became a twin spire and the capital of the west while Hammerfast was the other spire, and had been overthrown by an evil dictater that only believed in one god(Gasp!). Whenever I start building a world, I always wonder why it is formed the way it is(naturally, magically, and historically), and what evil mastermind is trying to rule it.
As for what settings will be published, I'm hoping for Greyhawk. I've always wanted to play it. And the Temple of Elemental Evil is a favorite with my group, so that one would be awesome.
I'm currently running Lost Mine of Phandelver in the Forgotten Realms because it has the relevant setting info in it. In the future, I will run any published adventures that I decide to run (such as the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure I picked up a copy of) in the setting that they are pre-written with relevant setting info included for.
Beyond those published adventures, my campaigns that I do the writing for take place in an as of yet unnamed campaign setting that my group of players have had a few campaigns take place in so far, and all of those create a single continuous world for our use.
...and if I didn't have that world to work with, I'd just use any of the various campaign settings that I have accumulated over the years because a campaign setting is almost never about mechanical details, so they are easily used regardless of which rules version you prefer to play with.
Neat take on the Forgotten Realms, GrrHero! I think the first campaigns to be published will be FR and Eberron, but neither are my cup of tea.
I've always home-made my worlds, never satisfied with premade settings' aesthetic choices or the idea of reading thru so many pages of mythology and history. I run alot of things, but my favorite tends to be somewhere between fantasy and science-fiction, like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (manga).
A sample area blurb of mine:
Water, arable land, or another life-giving resource is dwindling. It may be overseen by a nature-guardian or factions who use their control of it for military or religious dominance. There are also simple but vulnerable villages living with what they have, violent rebels against the controlling factions, and, in the wilderness, strange creatures and geoformation aberrations (like crystal fields that spread quickly, maybe even over living organic matter).
A sample scenario blurb of mine:
PCs are marooned near a derelict settlement in a harsh clime. (Or are sent to investigate a space station gone silent and find staff who may still live aboard.) The wraithlike wildlife need be driven off by energy fields (unstopped by normal physical barriers). The shield is down, and we need it up before nightfall. Missions: Restore power (find generators), turn on shield projector (central maintenance dome). Once power comes back, find out some life form is feeding on the energy forming the shield; need to clear it away. Is that why the settlement was abandoned, or…?
My advice is to analyze what you like about TV shows, games, books, and movies to steal subject matter and scenarios, but don't let yourself be limited by a certain feel or genre. Also, the more you play D&D, the more you'll learn about how to adapt ideas to D&D. There's also this thread of advice.
I'm running a custom world where the gods abandoned their mortal worshippers right before a huge meteor shower broke up the continent into 1000s of smaller islands. The only access to divine power comes from relics that once belonged to powerful clerics and paladins and they act kind of like cell phone coverage. Sometimes the divine casters find themselves "out of range" and small towns only have access to low level miracles because of the cheaper relics they can afford.
However, I have very successfully been harvesting quests and adventures from the official modules and reflavouring small parts to make it fit.
Campaign settings are inherently a very system neutral thing, so there are tons of campaign settings out there and it really doesn't matter what world its for, as long as its a D&D world is extremly easy to run it since most of the things that exist in D&D have existed in every edition of the game (Druids, Barbarians, Elves, Gnomes, etc.. etc..).
That said as already mentioned it appears the default setting for D&D is Forgotten Realms and we do have a fair amount of information in terms of the 5th edition version of forgotten realms with Players Handbook itself, the basic set and the module that is already available. This is what my group is playing right now, though I'm not GMing it.
My first campaign will be set in Norwarld, the setting for Test of the Warlords which I'm not sure if that is part of a campaign setting or not, its kind of a generic fantasy setting roughly based on middle ages Europe like region.
As for advice, its generally a good idea to simply ask your players what fantasy setting interests them, best to ask at the table so they can hold a discussion, throw some ideas around and build a consensus. As a DM whatever story you want to tell, its usually fairly easy to fit it into any setting, in particular the more established settings like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk where pretty much any fantasy lore you can think off from dark ages europe to middle ages Japan are covered and everything inbetween.
If you plan on running a module though its usually best to simply use whatever world its intended for, most modules are usually based on establish settings and life is much easier for the DM when using those settings for said module.
If your looking for something a bit more interesting and unique then the standard tropes, there are a lot of really great campaign settings available dirt cheap at RPG Drive Thru. Here is a short list of ones I have run that have made for some amazingly unique games.
Scarred Lands (Ghelspad): Basically a kind of dark post apacolyptic world where gods fought in the realm of men represented by great Titans who have ravaged and poisioned the land. Really great almost survival like fantasy. Some really great modules written for this one.
Darksun: Classic but refreshed in 4th edition in an amazing way, easily the best source book to come out of that edition.
Eberron: I've only run it once but really unique steampunk/magic world, I recommend the 3rd edition version of the book, really well written. Really great for kingdom building style campaigns.
Good Luck!
Midgard campaign setting: Really great if you like sort of more traditional dark ages europe style fantasy.
If you want to play a really non-generic setting and have some player buy-in I suggest spending a session playing Microscope.
It results in some honest to Glob weird settings but you're also building in player interest by having them help develop it.
The other great thing is that part of the game is based around developing the history for your world.
I played it with my brothers once to create a fantasy setting and ended up with:
One massive continent with a mega city and many tiny settlements.
No humans.
Gods that lived and died on the physical plane like everyone else and could be challenged/slain.
Gnomes as the ruling race due to a particular legendary figure establishing a huge spy network.
Minotaurs/centaurs/elementals/giants as common civilised races.
Mind you, if you take this route get ready for some homebrewin'.
Bonus other Sci-fi setting that my regular group created using Microscope:
World is messed up from ebola, something like 60% casualties. America closes off it's borders for quarantine purposes.
Aliens arrive and help us develop cure. There is an alien civil war between the observers and the interventionists and humanity gets sucked in.
After a lot of fighting in eastern Europe and down toward the Mediterranean the Aliens leave.
With some of their tech left behind humanity starts to bounce back.
The players took the roles of a military team sent from the new European government to head into America to re-establish contact and find out what's been going on.
I have always used and/or played in homebrew settings until this past weekend. For the first time ever I played in an 'official setting'...Ravenloft.
Generally, I love homebrew settings better though because each one is unique and full of so many possiblities! 
Build your own world collaboratively with Microscope:
http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/
We currently play in Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
Ansbach wrote:
I'm running Hoard of the Dragon Queen so Forgotten Realms. Before that I ran my own setting.
I did a few Pathfinder games in Skyrim. That was pretty fun.
I play forgotten realms mainly. More than any other setting it simply feels more like a living, breathing world and less like a theme park compared to others.
Dragonlance is a unique world with interesting creatures like tinker gnomes, draconians, and kender. It also offers interesting magical orders of the white, red and black robes, each with their own unique flavors and spellcasting that waxes and wanes depending on lunar cycles. There is a strong overarching good vs evil theme and the war of the lance, though it happened quite awhile ago, often dominates the campaign.
Dark Sun is pretty unique with its focus on potent player characters balanced by very limited resources. Forget magic weapons, you're most epic moment might be to find a dagger made of real steel. Like Dragonlance spellcasting is interesting with defiler and preserver magic. Overall the grim, gritty feel of Dark Sun is a draw.
Ravenloft is the horror genre and it requires a higher caliber DM to run on average IMO. Telling a story is one thing, but actually getting the players scared is something else. Fear and sanity mechanics go a long way to inject the appropriate atmosphere, but a DM well read on Lovecraft and other horror genres wouldn't hurt either.
Planescape...I have a love hate relationship here. As a Lovecraft fan I prefer my planar creatures beyond the ken of men...not throwing back ales at the table next to you. While I found the setting campy at times by my standards, it tried and sometimes succeeded in injecting a gritty element. In fact, Planescape Torment was one of my favorite PC games of all time. If you like the idea of running around the planes of existence and flirting with Outsiders, this is the setting for you. Plus Modrons are awesome.
Spelljammer...if you like the idea of traveling between the campaign setting worlds of the forgotten realms, Dragonlance, and others, and don't have the spells to instantly transport yourself there, why not make the journey on a sailing vessel that travels in space with physics that don't make a bit of sense. I actually like this setting and the module "under the dark fist" is one of the most memorable I ran, but it is a bit odd. Certainly an interesting and fun change of pace.
Ive never played greyhawk or ebberon so I can't comment on either. Did I miss any others?
NoNeedForNames wrote:
iserith wrote:
Some really good ideas.
I do want to say that collaborative world-building is great and it can get your players to buy into the world. Rember though that you will be shouldering the major of the burden of fleshing the world out after all the brainstorming is done; remember you need to also be able to buy into the world that you and your players create.
I'm playing in one completely homebrew bronze age world, a heavely modified Ravenloft game, and a modular campaign. I DM a homebrew campaign that cherry picked a lot of different elements from a number of D&D settings and ideas from off the message boards. I also do a bunch of homebrew theme based one-shot adventures.