Definately Forgotten Realms, especially Sword Coast (North!) I certainly am not a fan of any oriental setting, or a setting with too much... steam/whatever-punk references (ala Eberron), and when comparing Greyhawk to FR, it felt quite simple.
However! If we were to talk about fantasy settings in general, I would rather take LOTR or Witcher and put Forgotten Realms as my 2nd or 3rd on the top three list.
I have to add that I hate the Fourth edition lore. It's horrible!
EDIT: Just to cover my ass; I am not saying that Greyhawk is bad, not at all, it's certainly my third favourite D&D setting, with Dragonlance coming Second.
I believe I would also like to add that I hate deserts & jungles in my heavily european influenced medieval fantasy. I can never see my character having any role in such places. But The North - ala Icewind Dale? Oh yes!
Pathfinder's success I attribute mainly to their high-quality adventure modules. This is something that D&D 3.5 and 4e are sorely lacking, though they have put out and still are releasing modules for 4e. However, they're nowhere as flavorful as the Paizo Pathfinder modules.
The Pathfinder RPG itself is a slightly houseruled version of D&D 3.5 that doesn't fix the glaring problems in that edition while making some problems worse (spellcasters are even better than in 3.5). Furthermore, the Paizo forums, last time I was there (during the playtest), was overrun by anti-intellectual posters who drove away the more mathematically-inclined posters who honestly wanted to fix the bugs in the system.
That said, a player's playgroup matters more than whatever edition you're playing. I've been in some decent Pathfinder campaigns despite not liking Pathfinder that much, and I've been in some terribad 4e campaigns despite being a big 4e fan. It also helps that I don't take roleplaying too seriously so I will never be a nerd raging grognard no matter how many edition changes come in my lifetime.
While I agree that paizo makes some pretty good adventure paths I think there were quite a few great ones for DnD 3rd/3.5 aswell (I can't comment on 4e since after giving it the old college try I distanced myself from it as much as possible). Off the top of my head Red Hand of Doom and City of The Spider Queen come to mind, not to mention the great adventure paths paizo made for Dungeon Magazine: Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide. Those three titles are epic and are made solely for DnD 3/3.5 edition.
I'm not sure why you think that pathfinder didn't fix any of the balance issues with 3.5 or made them worse. Much of the spellcasting cheese has been removed from the game, such as divine metamagic and the persistant spell feat. On top of that many of the core spells were revamped toning them down or changing them and many spells were never included in pathfinder. The reason why spellcasters were so powerful in 3.5 is because every new splatbook brought out new spells and feats with little preplanning of how they would interact with one another. While pathfinder does add new spells and feats in their new releases they're not nearly as many and I've found that they have a better compass of how things will act off each other and keep things relatively balanced.
I'm running two pathfinder games at the moment and playing in two others (yeah I play a lot) and our group (which has a few min maxers and powergamers) are typically pretty well balanced with no one character typically stealing the show. This was not the case in DnD, my friend played a Warblade which was the epitome of cheese (for a melee character). He would dual wield Kukri's have 11 or so attacks per round with a 15-20x2 crit range and every two rounds could simply chop off an enemies head and kill him outright if he failed a stupidly high save, if you passed you ONLY took 20d6 damage instead. Don't get me started on what my cleric was like...
Ay my local gaming shop I am constantly hearing people complain about cheesey builds and broken this and overpowered that in regards to 4e. If there are rules involved someone will find a way to exploit them. This is true for every gaming system so there's no real point in poking at one and not the other. But I do think it is unfair to say that paizo didn't do a good job of shoring up the power levels between classes in their iteration of DnD.
The Warblade is generally considered one of the more balanced classes among the CharOp community, and is nowhere near as broken as the Big Three: Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. It may seem like the Warblade is overpowered, but that's only when compared to the Fighter, which is a badly-designed class in 3.5, nowhere near as awesome as its 2e counterpart. Besides, 20d6 damage is only 70 average damage. At that level, what non-trivial monsters will die from 70 damage? Compare that to the wizard, who can insta-kill enemies as low as level 1 with Sleep and Color Spray? The Warblade is basically how the fighter was supposed to work. It's the master of melee combat, and is closer in spirit to the earlier editions' fighters compared to the actual 3.5 fighter class.
This is a very informative and educational post about class balance in D&D 3.5. It assumes an equal level of optimization among the party as well as the knowledge of how to play one's class intelligently and without using cheese:
The tier system is interesting, but I've always found some of the logic silly. Yes, wizards can bend reality and create pocket dimensions and fighters can't. Okay, how useful is that in actual combat? Being able to bend reality is largely a flavor/fluff issue. All that really matters is whether or not someone is an effective part of the team, not what they can do out of combat (that is in no way defending 3.x fighter design, btw, just nitpicking on that one particular issue).
Anyway, the big thing a lot of people miss when talking about balance is simply the fact that many people dislike overbalancing as much or more than actual imbalance. Basically, if you start to design something with the sole purpose of keeping the most hardcore nerds from breaking it (like many online RPGs)* so much of the flavor gets lost that you are kind of in a situation where the cure does more damage than the disease. Many D&D players were perfectly fine with casters generally being more powerful than martial characters; most of the worlds were built with that assumption (and look at what happened to FR when they tried to retcon it). That doesn't mean people want one player to steal the show or anything, but one of the major criticisms against 4e has always been that "everyone is the same." It's not an entirely fair criticism, of course, but it has stuck and done tremendous damage to the D&D brand.
*I'll throw out the WoW example. During their process in overhauling the game every expansion, Blizzard has also inevitably had to homogenize classes and specs. Some players love this, but many hate it. Their bleeding of customers has a lot of similarities to WOTC in that the developers sometimes work so hard to fix perceived problems (which many of the players might not actually believe are problems) that they do unintended damage to the people who liked the game for what it was.
out of curiosity, where is shadow runner? like, what realm is that? heh Always though Shadow Run would make for a beastly MMO that was super impossible to balance. Also proffered it over standard DnD (any ruleset) for tabletop. When you can spend your starting cash on cybernetic sex toys what could possibly go wrong? On a series note, the rule-set for combat is quite similar to 2.0 but with some very interesting rules that cover cybernetics/bionics and magic, its set in a near future universe rather then fantasy.
If I had to pick I would go with PRE 4th edition Forgotten Realms.
If I could make my own, well 4th edition Cosmos because the great wheel was a wankfest, 3rd edition ruleset (with additions and class reworking closer to Pathfinder) to make things more balanced. The Unearthed Arcana had some good ideas there.
And i would trim the monster manual down to one book and one book only.
The Warblade is generally considered one of the more balanced classes among the CharOp community, and is nowhere near as broken as the Big Three: Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. It may seem like the Warblade is overpowered, but that's only when compared to the Fighter, which is a badly-designed class in 3.5, nowhere near as awesome as its 2e counterpart. Besides, 20d6 damage is only 70 average damage. At that level, what non-trivial monsters will die from 70 damage? Compare that to the wizard, who can insta-kill enemies as low as level 1 with Sleep and Color Spray? The Warblade is basically how the fighter was supposed to work. It's the master of melee combat, and is closer in spirit to the earlier editions' fighters compared to the actual 3.5 fighter class.
This is a very informative and educational post about class balance in D&D 3.5. It assumes an equal level of optimization among the party as well as the knowledge of how to play one's class intelligently and without using cheese:
This is getting off-topic, so methinks I will stop here.
I'd have to disagree with the Warblade being a balanced class. Sure, the wizard druid and cleric CAN be more powerful but that's typically only when you allow a slew of splatbooks to be used for character creation. The Warblade is silly due to their Feral Death Blow maneuver. Sure, once you use a maneuver it is expended until you renew maneuvers, much like a spell, but unlike a spell renewing maneuvers for a Warblade is simply making a full attack action... something every other melee class relies on to be useful at all. If a wizard or cleric has their Finger of Death basically negated by a successful save they can't say "Ok, Storm Giant just wait for about 8 hours while I prepare another one of those."
The Warblade gets multiple save or dies... in every battle... all day long... forever. And to get this move off it's not particularly difficult, make a jump check equal to the targets AC (ring of jumping, Thri-Kreen +20 racial bonus to Jump anyone?) and then the save is DC 19 + Str modifier. So the save is based off the primary stat just like the wizard or sorcerer but can be used at-will and obviously blows past spell resistance because it isn't a spell.
This isn't some zaney combo that requires 3 or 4 splatbooks to accomplish, this is 1 move taken from the same book the class was written in. And sure 20d6 is only 70 damage on average but that's on a PASSED save. Compare that to the 3d6 + 1 damage per caster level of damaged on a Finger of Death or you could always cast Wail of The Banshee and kill all your party members in the process.
What makes the Wizard, Druid, and Cleric overpowered is if you give them infinite options (well, let them use any book) what makes the Warblade overpowered was that it was written down in the same book its core maneuvers were written in :P
So, I agree that this really shouldn't be taken any further here as it is off-topic and I will agree that if you're using every book ever printed for 3.5 the Warblade falls somewhere in the upper middle class for a powerful character. But, when added to a core game with every other core class, or even to a game with classes that were presented in other splatbooks without the option to take every choice imagineable it is by and large an overpowered choice.
I like Dragonlance. Granted, the setting turned to crap fairly quickly, but I liked most all the elements and it was a much more coherent setting that any of the competition.
You can connect every single AD&D campaign setting through Planescape, which makes it massive beyond measure. Not to mention all the fun things one can get in the Lower Planes. I'm sure Hear'Dalis and Dorn know what I'm talking about! =D
My second vote would go to Dark Sun. It's a much better post-apocalyptic setting than Fallout ever will imho. And the Halfling cannibals there are just too cute to resist.
Forgotten Realms (Faerun) ain't bad, but truth be told I grew somewhat tired of it. cRPG's used FR over and over again to no end, leaving all the other campaign settings in the dust.
I really couldn't have said it better. I wonder if there is actually any canon setting because Spelljammer and Planescape contradict themselves kind of.
Dragonlance will always have a place of honor for me. Not only does it have one of my favorite characters of all time (Raistlin) but it was also the first setting in which I ever played AD&D (PnP or CRPG). I still have extremely fond memories of playing the Gold Box engine game "The Dark Queen of Krynn" on a 386 PC when I was a kid.
Comments
I certainly am not a fan of any oriental setting, or a setting with too much... steam/whatever-punk references (ala Eberron), and when comparing Greyhawk to FR, it felt quite simple.
However! If we were to talk about fantasy settings in general, I would rather take LOTR or Witcher and put Forgotten Realms as my 2nd or 3rd on the top three list.
I have to add that I hate the Fourth edition lore. It's horrible!
EDIT: Just to cover my ass; I am not saying that Greyhawk is bad, not at all, it's certainly my third favourite D&D setting, with Dragonlance coming Second.
I believe I would also like to add that I hate deserts & jungles in my heavily european influenced medieval fantasy. I can never see my character having any role in such places. But The North - ala Icewind Dale? Oh yes!
I'm not sure why you think that pathfinder didn't fix any of the balance issues with 3.5 or made them worse. Much of the spellcasting cheese has been removed from the game, such as divine metamagic and the persistant spell feat. On top of that many of the core spells were revamped toning them down or changing them and many spells were never included in pathfinder. The reason why spellcasters were so powerful in 3.5 is because every new splatbook brought out new spells and feats with little preplanning of how they would interact with one another. While pathfinder does add new spells and feats in their new releases they're not nearly as many and I've found that they have a better compass of how things will act off each other and keep things relatively balanced.
I'm running two pathfinder games at the moment and playing in two others (yeah I play a lot) and our group (which has a few min maxers and powergamers) are typically pretty well balanced with no one character typically stealing the show. This was not the case in DnD, my friend played a Warblade which was the epitome of cheese (for a melee character). He would dual wield Kukri's have 11 or so attacks per round with a 15-20x2 crit range and every two rounds could simply chop off an enemies head and kill him outright if he failed a stupidly high save, if you passed you ONLY took 20d6 damage instead. Don't get me started on what my cleric was like...
Ay my local gaming shop I am constantly hearing people complain about cheesey builds and broken this and overpowered that in regards to 4e. If there are rules involved someone will find a way to exploit them. This is true for every gaming system so there's no real point in poking at one and not the other. But I do think it is unfair to say that paizo didn't do a good job of shoring up the power levels between classes in their iteration of DnD.
The Warblade is generally considered one of the more balanced classes among the CharOp community, and is nowhere near as broken as the Big Three: Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. It may seem like the Warblade is overpowered, but that's only when compared to the Fighter, which is a badly-designed class in 3.5, nowhere near as awesome as its 2e counterpart. Besides, 20d6 damage is only 70 average damage. At that level, what non-trivial monsters will die from 70 damage? Compare that to the wizard, who can insta-kill enemies as low as level 1 with Sleep and Color Spray? The Warblade is basically how the fighter was supposed to work. It's the master of melee combat, and is closer in spirit to the earlier editions' fighters compared to the actual 3.5 fighter class.
This is a very informative and educational post about class balance in D&D 3.5. It assumes an equal level of optimization among the party as well as the knowledge of how to play one's class intelligently and without using cheese:
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=658.0
This is getting off-topic, so methinks I will stop here.
Anyway, the big thing a lot of people miss when talking about balance is simply the fact that many people dislike overbalancing as much or more than actual imbalance. Basically, if you start to design something with the sole purpose of keeping the most hardcore nerds from breaking it (like many online RPGs)* so much of the flavor gets lost that you are kind of in a situation where the cure does more damage than the disease. Many D&D players were perfectly fine with casters generally being more powerful than martial characters; most of the worlds were built with that assumption (and look at what happened to FR when they tried to retcon it). That doesn't mean people want one player to steal the show or anything, but one of the major criticisms against 4e has always been that "everyone is the same." It's not an entirely fair criticism, of course, but it has stuck and done tremendous damage to the D&D brand.
*I'll throw out the WoW example. During their process in overhauling the game every expansion, Blizzard has also inevitably had to homogenize classes and specs. Some players love this, but many hate it. Their bleeding of customers has a lot of similarities to WOTC in that the developers sometimes work so hard to fix perceived problems (which many of the players might not actually believe are problems) that they do unintended damage to the people who liked the game for what it was.
What !!! It's my choice lol
Always though Shadow Run would make for a beastly MMO that was super impossible to balance.
Also proffered it over standard DnD (any ruleset) for tabletop.
When you can spend your starting cash on cybernetic sex toys what could possibly go wrong?
On a series note, the rule-set for combat is quite similar to 2.0 but with some very interesting rules that cover cybernetics/bionics and magic, its set in a near future universe rather then fantasy.
If I could make my own, well 4th edition Cosmos because the great wheel was a wankfest, 3rd edition ruleset (with additions and class reworking closer to Pathfinder) to make things more balanced. The Unearthed Arcana had some good ideas there.
And i would trim the monster manual down to one book and one book only.
The Warblade gets multiple save or dies... in every battle... all day long... forever. And to get this move off it's not particularly difficult, make a jump check equal to the targets AC (ring of jumping, Thri-Kreen +20 racial bonus to Jump anyone?) and then the save is DC 19 + Str modifier. So the save is based off the primary stat just like the wizard or sorcerer but can be used at-will and obviously blows past spell resistance because it isn't a spell.
This isn't some zaney combo that requires 3 or 4 splatbooks to accomplish, this is 1 move taken from the same book the class was written in. And sure 20d6 is only 70 damage on average but that's on a PASSED save. Compare that to the 3d6 + 1 damage per caster level of damaged on a Finger of Death or you could always cast Wail of The Banshee and kill all your party members in the process.
What makes the Wizard, Druid, and Cleric overpowered is if you give them infinite options (well, let them use any book) what makes the Warblade overpowered was that it was written down in the same book its core maneuvers were written in :P
So, I agree that this really shouldn't be taken any further here as it is off-topic and I will agree that if you're using every book ever printed for 3.5 the Warblade falls somewhere in the upper middle class for a powerful character. But, when added to a core game with every other core class, or even to a game with classes that were presented in other splatbooks without the option to take every choice imagineable it is by and large an overpowered choice.