The ruleset is only half of a tabletop roleplaying game – if that. The setting is usually a far greater hook, a much bigger part of the narrative, and an equally chunky section of the rulebook.

What first draws people when you’re pitching an RPG?

It’s rarely the way you roll dice to decide things. I’m not knocking mechanics here – they’re an important part of any TTRPG. In many cases, the rules feed into the RPG’s setting. However, it’s the fiction you lead with, nine times out of ten.

I can’t answer why the best TTRPG settings are the best. However, I do know games with settings that have captured fans’ imaginations for years or decades, stand out in a crowded field, and have endless adventure and storytelling potential.

Read on and see if you agree.

Dogs in the Vineyard is the West That Never Was

Before I get into this, I don’t want people to think I’m being uncritical of D. Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard, particularly its setting. There are problems, but they don’t ruin the whole.

The Wild West is as popular for TTRPG worlds as it is in other media. That is to say, very. Most, like Deadlands, put a fantastical or weird twist on this beloved aspect of history. However, none do it as memorably as Dogs in the Vineyard.

In Dogs in the Vineyard, players control God’s Watchdogs in the True Faith. This represents an alternate history of a quasi-independent Mormon kingdom in Utah. It’s alternate history meets pure bleak vibes in one of the most thought-provoking RPG settings.

The main draw of Dogs in the Vineyard comes from its open-ended questions of community, authority, and faith. The players have absolute jurisdiction in matters of the True Faith as they travel between communities and try to resolve their problems.

In one town, you might deal with lingering demons of the very literal kind. In another, it might be bad blood between families causing every bit as much trouble.

The aesthetics of the West meet a controversial (for good reasons) religious movement meets a genuinely thought-provoking melancholy fantasy setting where nothing quite feels right. There’s a reason Dogs in the Vineyard‘s popularity has long outlasted its print.

There are problems – which have caused Vincent D. Baker to pull Dogs in the Vineyard – most notably its unthinking replication of Native American tropes from Western fiction. These should be kept in mind. However, they don’t sour the game’s strange beauty enough to stop it from being a top-tier RPG setting.

Dungeons & Dragons Has Quantity and Quality

Sorry, it had to happen.

Dungeons & Dragons has come to represent generic fantasy for many in the TTRPG space. However, this mostly applies to its basic settings like The Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. Even these have their strengths that have kept them highly in print over the years.

However, D&D has far more settings than just these. Its popularity and diversity have helped it explore more worlds than most TTRPGs could dream of – particularly in the experimental days of AD&D 2e and D&D 3e.

Perhaps the Forgotten Realms isn’t your thing, you’re not a fan of generic fantasy. How about gothic horror? Or unique interwar-esque magicpunk? Fantasy post-apocalyptic desert survival? Pulp-y outer space exploration?

With as many D&D settings as there are, the game was bound to turn out one all-timer. However, it’s gone above and beyond with fan-favourite settings by the handful.

Personally, Ravenloft is the best D&D setting for me. I’m a gothic horror and dark fantasy fan, and there’s something about the atmosphere it does fantastically. Others love Spelljammer. More still love Planescape. Or maybe Dark Sun, Eberron, or even Birthright.

One of the biggest complaints about D&D 5e is its stripping down and underusing of the game’s fantastic history of settings. The many fantasy worlds TTRPG players can explore is one of D&D‘s biggest edition strengths.

Just read some previous edition books if you don’t believe me.

Blades in the Dark Blends Genres Perfectly

So I’m putting many of my favourites on this list. I won’t claim to be unbiased, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to call some of these among the best RPGs with the best worlds.

Blades in the Dark isn’t quite steampunk. It’s not quite dark fantasy. It’s not quite horror. It’s not quite neo-noir. It’s not quite the popular video game Dishonored. However, it’s a lot of all of these things.

In Blades in the Dark, players control criminal gangs within the powder-keg city of Doskvol. It’s a city surrounded by badlands, on the far-flung regions of an empire ruled by a sinister immortal. The world is undergoing an industrial revolution powered by the blood and essence of whale-like daemons and everything is full of ghosts. Oh, and there’s no such thing as sunlight.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s madcap and truly excellent.

The TTRPG setting of Blades in the Dark is perfectly crafted to force a certain type of play. If you want to get anything done, you have to step on some toes. There’s not enough room for everyone because going outside the city limits is death. Technology is fantastic and revolutionary – and people largely use it to do horrible things to one another.

Blades in the Dark‘s Doskvol setting is punky, and dark, and nightmarish, and fun. It’s inhabited by larger-than-life gangs, brutal law enforcement, and enough colourful encounters to provide a decade’s worth of crime drama.

Whether you’re protecting outbound trains from hostile ghosts, blowing up a mad scientist’s lair, or skirmishing in a beautiful gothic fountain square, Blades in the Dark‘s RPG world has everything you need.

Edge of the Empire is a Star Wars RPG Frontier

Okay, an important disclaimer. Obviously, the Edge of the Empire TTRPG did not invent the Star Wars galaxy. Plenty of the love for the setting comes from one of the most beloved film series of all time.

However, Edge of the Empire deserves its spot on this list of the best TTRPG settings because of how it approaches Star Wars. It focuses on an excellent, beloved, and often under-used aspect of the world – the far-flung frontier regions of the galaxy.

Edge of the Empire doesn’t forefront the Rebellion’s struggle against the Empire. It doesn’t focus on the mysticism and feuds of the Jedi and Sith. It’s about the colonists, outlaws, and explorers who try to make a better life for themselves in the furthest reaches of a decaying and unpleasant galaxy.

Bounty hunters and explorers have always been some of Star Wars‘ most beloved aspects, and the Edge of the Empire game forefronts them and their stomping grounds. Sci-fi technology and tropes clash with basic deprivation and the blank spots on the map. Everyday people rub shoulders with crime lords. The Empire are as awful as ever – but they’re not around all that much.

More than any other gameline in the Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars TTRPG, Edge of the Empire has boundless possibilities. Civilised or wild. Peaceful or violent. Corrupt or communal. You can find anything on the Outer Rim – but you might need to fight to keep it.

Basically, it’s the first season of The Mandalorian in Star Wars tabletop RPG form.

Don’t Rest Your Head Stars an Absurdist Horror City

Don’t Rest Your Head is a small horror RPG that sets itself apart by the sheer bizarreness of its setting. It takes place in the Mad City, a location and layer of reality that can only be accessed by its native denizens and by incredibly sleep-deprived individuals.

In Mad City, dreams, concepts, and physical dangers are one and the same. While being real people makes the player characters dangerous and powerful, almost the entire city is against them and wants to do unspeakable things.

Players in Don’t Rest Your Head have to grapple with a bizarre reality that perfectly splits the difference between a bad dream and the delirium that sleep deprivation begins. Its locations, inhabitants, and features are surreal and terrifying, but also not without a distinctive and grotesque sense of humour.

The game presents you with an hour (13 o’clock, naturally) when every door out of the Mad City seals and traps the players in, a boarding school that turns innocent girls into Ladies in Hating, and people who exist as a fixed job and function every hour of every day. It’s every possible anxiety you might be able to have, painted by Salvadore Dali, filtered through Victorian London, and fired at you by the GM.

Honestly, Don’t Rest Your Head is as much of a pleasure to read as it is to play. The Mad City is the main reason why, more lurid and inventive than almost any other TTRPG world.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Gives a New Look at a Classic

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is the last adapted RPG setting on this list. However, it more than earns a spot at the table due to its pedigree and its take on things.

The Warhammer Fantasy world is a classic in the tabletop game space. It employs a pitch-perfect dark fantasy take on Rennaissance Europe, with almost every location being mappable to an equivalent in the real world.

Despite drawing from actual human history more than most tabletop RPG worlds, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay feels more original and larger-than-life than most of its competition. It combines Lord of the Rings scale with a world that is callous, violent, and flat-out unpleasant much of the time.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay takes a deeper and more intimate look at this fantasy setting than the tabletop wargame. Rather than controlling vast armies and legendary heroes, you control individual people. For the most part, not particularly impressive people either.

The creaking, corrupt machinations of the Empire are less excusable when you play a minor cog in them. A funny, weak enemy from Warhammer Fantasy is less of a joke when one bad dice roll has serious consequences. A minor town barely even worth fighting over might become your entire world.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay makes one of the best and most massive TTRPG worlds even bigger by making you a very small player in it. You can raid tombs for treasure, make it as a crime lord, or become a great leader for your nation – but the world doesn’t have to make it easy.

Cyberpunk Presents Something All Too Real

Cyberpunk (better known as Cyberpunk 2020 or Cyberpunk RED to distinguish itself from the genre) is a foundational text in a beloved type of science fiction. It has had an outsized impact that few TTRPGs can claim – largely due to its setting.

The world of Cyberpunk RED (slash Cyberpunk 2020, substitute your preferred name), and particularly its focal point of Night City, is a bleak look at a future that becomes more plausible by the minute.

Taking place in the near future, Cyberpunk shows a world beset by rampant capitalism, unregulated technology, and the breakdown of law and order. As a great man put it, the only thing that makes you a criminal is getting caught.

Night City is an awful place to be, but the sort of awful place that makes for fantastic TTRPG adventures. Build up your criminal reputation, fight against forces far greater than you, and then upgrade your body to do it all over again.

Cyberpunk‘s setting genuinely deserves its spot alongside other seminal cyberpunk works like Blade Runner, Akira, and even Neuromancer. It brings together everything fans love about the genre. Governments that are both powerless and malevolent, rampant technology making violence breathtakingly easy, and the sort of collapse that makes criminality the best way to get ahead. It’s all here.

Even better, the dense worldbuilding of Cyberpunk RED helps stand it apart from other RPG worlds in its plight. The misery isn’t caused by an evil overlord or malevolent magic. Far more than cybertechnology, the problems are caused by artificial systems that have been imposed and exploited.

Aside from its fantastic aesthetic, engrossing alternate history, and technological coolness, Cyberpunk‘s setting is fantastic for people who don’t just want a world they can’t save, but one they can barely manage to improve.

These have been seven diverse, brilliant settings that make for fantastic TTRPG campaigns. However, these are far from the only brilliant words in tabletop gaming. What are some of your favourites?

If you’ve enjoyed this, please do leave a like and share it around. Also check out other Artificial Twenty articles, like the suggestions down below. It always means a lot!

To read better gushing about one of the TTRPGs on this list than I could ever manage, check out ‘Guest Article: Why DnD 5e Fans Should Try Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay‘.

If you want to see how versatile many TTRPG worlds can be, try ‘Five Fantasy Genres to Explore in D&D 5e Campaigns‘ instead.