- Has the most interesting setting?
- Is the easiest to build a campaign around?
- Has the "neatest" supplemental rules?
- Offers the best bang for your buck?
Also, how do these compare to the Hollow World setting, and its supplements? And are there any Gazetteer-ish products that I've missed?
Edit: What about Champions of Mystara? Does that have interesting setting-related details that can be used to build a campaign?
Karameikos and the one based on vikings were propably my own favourites though
For example, which of the sets:
- Has the most interesting setting?
- Is the easiest to build a campaign around?
- Has the "neatest" supplemental rules?
- Offers the best bang for your buck?
Also, how do these compare to the Hollow World setting, and its supplements? And are there any Gazetteer-ish products that I've missed?
Most interesting setting: Glantri, Karameikos, Ylaruam, and Rockhome, Orcs of Thar
Easy to build a campaign around: same as above, though less easy with Rockhome
Best supplemental rules: Glantri, Orcs of Thar, Rockhome, Alfheim
Money/Value ratio: definitely Glantri, Karameikos
Hollow World vs. Known World:
1) there's a single basic setting book for HW, while with KW you need to get the various GAZs
2) KW is described in greater details, and merges well with the adventure modules (B, X, and CM series)
Other good ones are, IMHO: Glantri, Dawn of the Emperors, Ethengar.
I don't have the Darokin and Northern Reaches ones - but I believe they might be useful as well.
As for other Gazetteer-ish products: You might be interested in the Creature Crucible series. They detail non-human cultures, and give rules of playing monsters as PCs. These include woodland creatures (+ fairies), underwater creatures, flying creatures (+ gnomes) and lycanthropes.
EDIT: If you wish to have a rather "classic" D&D campaign - then Karameikos (although I don't like this GAZ very much), Glantri and Darokin are the most suitable settings. Maybe also Thyatis. My other recommendations are for more "unique" settings.
Glantri is good, but is rather more suited to the political game - making clerics illegal totally alters the balance of encounter difficulty in a standard D&D adventure as healing is nearly absent.
Rockhome and Alfhiem are also good, with the same problem on adventurer variety, though they have ways to get round it. Likewise the 5 Shires (which have a lot of non-halfling adventurers iirc).
I find Ierendi somewhat light-weight, but it was designed to be a frivoulous place...
The Northern reaches are good etc (I could go on for ages).
Personally I was not as impressed with Darokin and Minthroad - the merchant and trader parallel classes just add confusion more than value - and I have a problem with the khanates - not the gazeteer, but the size of the plain which I don't think is big enough to support a mongol-based nomadic nation.
One other comment on Karameikos - it is very much designed for low-level adventurers - characters are really expected to move elsewhere at high levels if adventuring, or change to a political game if staying. Most of the other gazeteers support more breadth of challenges.
I think my personal favourite is probably Ylaruam (but I wonder if my comment on the Ethengar steppes applies even more so to the Ylari desert...
Karameikos was the starting point, and many of the B modules find a home there. At the time, the level of detail was without parallel, and it still holds the interest really well.
The 3 non-human, Rockhome, Alfheim & Five Shires added a lot of interest to playing these characters. I also had the Orcs of Thar, but can't remember too much about it (memory is the first thing to go!
)I can't comment on Ylaruam - yet. There is no ESD, and I didn't buy it as an original, but - I have just managed to order a 2nd hand copy for £10. I hope to get it the beginning of next week, so I'll finally be able to get a handle on the desert culture.
I can't believe such an important gazeteer hasn't been issued as an ESD - I'm just hoping the copy I ordered is complete and not too battered.
The Northern Realms looks really interesting too - but be aware the ESD does not have the map included. Fortunately Thor's map does the job nicely.
Good, solid product, but doesnt include much new. Also suffers from being the first product in the series, so all the ground work had to be done here. Still, there is something very classic about this setting.
GAZ2 Emirates of Ylaruam
I didn't like this one personally. I did have a Desert Druid class though, aswell as rules for various horses.
GAZ3 Principalities of Glantri
Some humorous content, but overall a very good gaz, probably my fav. It also has tons of useful rules for magic-user characters
GAZ4 Kingdom of Ierendi
A bit too much on the silly side. Does have mass combat rules for ships.
GAZ5 Elves of Alfheim
An excellent product! Very good stuff about the elf societies, some interesting rules stuff aswell.
GAZ6 Dwarves of Rockhome
A good solid gaz. Includes rules for Dwarven Clerics.
GAZ7 The Northern Reaches
Another good, solid and well researched gaz. Some useful extra rules and plenty of ideas. If anyting, I'd say there are more ideas in that book that I would have liked to see developed.
GAZ8 The Five Shires
I dont like this one very much, though it did have rules allowing Halflings to go to 35th level.
GAZ9 Minrothad Guilds
Quite good setting info, and has rules for sea trade. Also has a Merchant Prince class, but I never cared much for that class, since it wasnt sea or trade oriented enough.
GAZ10 Orcs of Thar
Annoyingly silly, but has useful rules for high level humanoids and humanoid PCs.
GAZ11 Republic of Darokin
I always liked this one, but I suppose it is a bit dull. It does have rules for trading (land-based) and a better merchant class than
GAZ12 Golden Khan of Ethengar
A more unusual setting, but I wish the other gaz's had been modelled more like this one. It is filled with useful stuff.
GAZ13 The Shadow Elves
A very good gaz, introducing one of the most characteristic races of Mystara.
GAZ14 Atruaghin Clans
This one just didnt do it for me. It does have alot of rules, extra equipment, a new class etc in it though.
Dawn of the Emperors
Covers a wide area, but lacks the space to go into too much detail on each subject. If you are going for ESDs, this one costs the same as the other gaz's so you'd get more pages for the dollar if you go for this one. Has new spells, new rules and new classes.
Hollow World
As with DotE, the HW box has more stuff in it that a single gaz, and the added bonus that it is a complete setting. A very good product IMO, and I wish TSR had released a Known World box in the same format...
Håvard
Edit: What about Champions of Mystara? Does that have interesting setting-related details that can be used to build a campaign?
CoM is an interesting box. It is just not what I would recommend as a beginner's choice, unless you plan to center your campaign around the X4/X5/X10 modules or the airships.
If you're interested in Savage Coast, then you should get the free AD&D version and adapt it back to OD&D (and anyway CoM is somewhat lacking on that side, the original VotPA articles were much better).
The main geographical features of CoM are Sind, Graakhalia and the Serpent Peninsula (originally described in X4 and X6 or X7, IIRC).
Anyway, personally my favourites were GAZ5 The Elves of Alfheim, GAZ3 The Principalities of Glantri, and most of all GAZ13 The Shadow Elves. I loved the stuff about the Radiance in GAZ3, and GAZ13 turned it all on its head and added even more, in an extremely cool way. I also liked the way GAZ5 and GAZ13 showed different points of view on the same issue.
Dawn of the Emperors was also great, even if the areas were a little too big to be covered in detail. Champions of Mystara disappointed me a little I guess, but only because so much of it was reprinted from Dragon, meaning that I had already read it. :P
One thing no one seems to have mentioned so far is that the Hollow World set also has three Gazetteer-style supplements, detailing three of the biggest nations of that setting. Of those, Sons of Azca added wonderfully to one of my favourite Immortals, Atruatzin (Atruaghin) and Kingdom of Nithia provided one of my absolute favourite maps along with a nice setting. I never really got into the Milenian Empire book much.
I can't comment on Ylaruam - yet. There is no ESD, and I didn't buy it as an original, but - I have just managed to order a 2nd hand copy for £10. I hope to get it the beginning of next week, so I'll finally be able to get a handle on the desert culture.
I can't believe such an important gazeteer hasn't been issued as an ESD - I'm just hoping the copy I ordered is complete and not too battered.
Ignore this - they forgot to update the listing, and it's already been sold!
Boo hoo!
Ignore this - they forgot to update the listing, and it's already been sold!
Boo hoo!
That's too bad. The party IMC is about to enter Ylaruam from the Northern Reaches (didn't quite make it last session :evillaugh ) so I've been doing a lot more reading of this gaz than ever before. I have to say, this one is becoming one of my favourites and I only found it about a year or two ago.
Although the extra rules and classes and such that were in the gazetteers were a fantastic icing, it was the cake that I enjoyed the most - how to portray the culture and interact with it. When a player can make a good guess were an NPC is from once they hear his name gives the world that extra "lived-in" feel.
One of the main things that I absolutly love about Mystara is the ease at which you can have almost any style of campaign imaginable, from "Arabian Knights" desert nomads, to pint-size pirates, to whatever, without having to change campaings. So for as to which gaz is the best for you, it may depend on the style of game you enjoy the most.
My next favourite would be GAZ10, although like some said it's really silly. I played many comedy campaigns using it. It has some really cool bits among the silliness.
If you like those two as much as I do, GAZ13 (which connects up to both) is exceptionally cool. If not, it's less interesting, IMHO.
I consider Dawn of the Emperors to be essential because it has details on Alphatia, which is a major political force that would be a lot of work to fake up for the individual DM. (For Thyatis you can get by with, "Oh, it's like the Roman Empire", and similar for most other countries, but Alphatia's unique.) This may be because GAZ3 has lots of Alphatian influence and I didn't have a clue what they were talking about at the time.
GAZ2 is another really good one - I was annoyed when I first read it because of the stylistic differences from other Gazeteers, but I reread it when I went home for Christmas and it's really grown on me. GAZ12 is also pretty neat.
As others have said, GAZ1 has a good tight society and is a good place to set a campaign, but it's kind of bland compared to those above.
I found GAZ7 to be particularly weak, as it didn't seem to fit into the rest of the Known World at all (it has a new cosmology and races taken from Norse myth that blatantly contradicts the other Gazeteers, and the power level seems way off) but if you're going to set the whole campaign there it might be worthwhile.
The others each have some good bits but I couldn't see setting a whole campaign there. I especially like the surprising halfling history in GAZ8, the Dwarf-Cleric class from GAZ6 (but I found the rest of the book a little lacking), and various elements of GAZ5 (but the whole thing didn't overwhelm me). I haven't read GAZ14.
Champions of Mystara and the AD&D Red Steel books are well worth it if you've gotten used to the main area of the world and are excited about each new bit of territory, as I am. They're not as detailed, though, so I wouldn't bother unless you want to know about the whole world.