[D&D 40th Anniversary Bloghop] Day Nine

Day Nine: First campaign setting (published or homebrew) you played in.

Faerûn. Plain and simple. From day one of the new century onward, that's where we've played, adventured, laughed, cried, lived, and died. Previous to that, as I've said, was largely skirmish miniature play. Post-turn-of-the-century, well, there was the abortive attempt to have the "spouses' game"; that was set in one of the guys' homebrew world. Other than that one failed attempt to deviate from our norm, it's been the land of Drizz't and Elminster.

That being said, however, it's an unwritten rule that none of the "heavies" from the novels or from the campaign setting will actually ever cross paths with any of our parties. We just don't want them in our world, so...they aren't. I know that's one of the common complaints about settings, and Faerûn in particular. We just work our way around that; they're not even mentioned. Canon too, is played with fast and loose. We don't care what's happened in the books or the setting previously unless it directly relates to the adventure at hand, which it seldom does.

Mostly we use Faerûn because it's easy. We have a map. We have established regions and cities, cultures and deities. Where canon works, we keep it. Where it doesn't, we toss it. We don't have a lot of time to create our own world(s); we're all forty-somethings with largish families and careers so we don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It actually adds to the flavor; our characters know about Waterdeep because Waterdeep is an infamous location. We know what to expect when we go there, just like someone from our world knows what to expect when they travel to New Jersey. There's some basic knowledge there that helps move the game along. We don't treat it as a closed setting either. If we find something non-Faerûnian that works, we sandwich it in somewhere. We've taken the campaign setting and made it our own.