This got pulled from a sell box recently. I never listened to this podcast, but I enjoy good campaign settings. This one is on the smaller side, with the main island being the size of the US West Coast. There are a couple other island mini-continents on the map (not explored), and the rest of the world is yours.
The map reminds me of a Final Fantasy game on the old NES 8-bit console. It is not huge; there is a lot of ocean. The first continent is the largest and divided by mountains; the others are strange islands, thin strips of land, and oddly shaped islands. It feels like islands in a broken world more than a complete world. Which is okay; I can fill the rest out myself.
Some of the art is great, there are good maps, and there is a lot of cartoony art for characters, which is okay. I am not too hot on the cartoon art, but at least it does not have that same-ish feeling that many books from the larger publishers have.
This isn't an epic setting but a solid, small sandbox setting.
But for me, it is still too small, not epic enough, and not anything wrong about this setting - but I have better, more epic settings that feel more like places rooted in history than a collection of places visited. I have old-school 5E worlds that are a tour-de-force of amazing adventures.
Midgard is my favorite for depth, history, maps, and a sense of the natural world. I am saving this one for Tales of the Valiant. It is simply amazing. We discovered this during our 4E years, and I almost switched our campaign here. Best of all, unlike any Wizards settings, it is supported with current releases and new books.
You snooze, you lose, Forgotten Realms. All you have is nostalgia, and the shine is wearing off year after year. Not supporting a setting "damages the brand," and I left the TSR worlds a while ago to explore new places.
And sadly, the creators of many of the lore of the Forgotten Realms aren't helping with movies and media. We will only realize it is too little or too late when we lose that generation of creators. Then again, Wizards tried to get into TV and movies, and they blew it. The larger market isn't interested in the stories of D&D, just the game culture, which is easily copied by others. Visually and dynamically, there isn't much difference between D&D, ToV, A5E, MCDM RPG, or any fantasy RPG these days. The roleplaying uni-culture is what it is, and the word D&D is like Kleenex or Q-Tip.
You have to ask yourself the actual value of a brand if the name can mean any game from any publisher.
Lost Lands is my Level Up A5E setting of choice. Old School with street cred, home of the best grandaddy mega-dungeon, and plenty of old-school adventures converted to 5E make this a fantastic experience with rules that tip the hat to old-school play - just like A5E.
And it is home to the above. This a 5E version of what I feel is one of the projects Gary Gygax left as his legacy, and this blows the 'oh so rando' Tomb of Horrors out of the water as a dungeon where you must pay attention, synthesize history, solve mysteries, read, understand, and care about the culture. If you go through this without caring, not thinking, trusting the detect magic spell, divination, and passive perception are getting you through this, your characters will die. If you treat the native culture like dirt or act like tourists, your characters will die. If try to do this in one run and avoid roleplaying and breaking for outside research, your characters will die. More on this later, but this is S-tier dungeon adventuring here.
And, the other I am saving for Tales of the Valiant, the Arcanis Setting. A pseudo-fall of the Roman Empire mixed with magic and dark sorcery, and it feels epic and grand, with a deep sense of history.
Theria is a great little setting, but it does not give me what I want in a setting. I have too many other great ones I will barely explore. It is returning to my sell box, but not because I don't like it. It just pales in comparison to what I already have.
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