Your favourite third-party material?

[Tzardok]

What did you like about Kalamar? It’s one of those setting that I look at and find dull but anyone who actually uses it has good things to say about it, meaning there’s a good chance I’m just not looking at it deeply enough.

You are not alone in that; I also found it pretty dull.

[lylsyly]

I used a whole bunch of Kalamar in creating my last campaign world so that would have to be my answer.

What did you like about Kalamar? It’s one of those setting that I look at and find dull but anyone who actually uses it has good things to say about it, meaning there’s a good chance I’m just not looking at it deeply enough.

You are not alone in that; I also found it pretty dull.

And I find the scarred lands dull as well. I never said I liked it. When you are in a hurry plagiarism is a wonderful thing. Ready made maps complete with population centers and name and pop levels? Yes please! Races from from everywhere from krynn to winged elves from 2E? Yep!

[Fizban]

The main thing I liked about Kalamar is related to one of the accusations I make against Eberron- Kalamar actually has stats for its many different nations and cities and power centers. In detail it tells you the numbers and composition of every army in every territory. If you want to pit two forces against each other in Kalamar, they've actually given you the information to do that. At which point you can then involve the PCs and see what effects they can have on the actually established setting, rather than having to make it up yourself.

The downside is that yeah, if you want to actually use that, you have to really be using the setting itself, and it's fairly generic. Its big claim to fame to me is that it actually did this particular bit of legwork, but every other setting has big flashy often player-focused mechanical hooks (dragonmarks! psionics are important! X magic is taboo/gone/has an entirely new base class! magitech! dragon-people! animal-people! etc), often with massive pre-existing fanbase stuff (all the Forgotten Realms novels, all the Dragonlance novels, even Eberron had its own novels eventually), even before getting to the huge number of 1st party books at much higher power levels. Kingdoms of Kalamar is just a functional bog-standard setting with some particular extra details, in a weird licensing limbo, going up against the massive established setting of FR and immediately outclassed by the power creep that really got going in 3.5.

Another problem is that Kalamar is actually kinda huge, there's a ton of books for it. The main setting book itself is all setting stuff, with a separate Player's Guide, but it doesn't stop there. But most people if they even stumble across it are probably going to look first at either the setting book, which is all dry DM detail that many DMs won't even care about, or the Player's Guide, which is outdated.

[atemu1234]

Edit: The Jack of Tears is listed as CR10. WTF.

TBF I think that one's a typo, though I'm not 100% sure. As written he's conceivably a strong CR 20, end-game villain, but is otherwise sort of a Lord British Postulate sort of character.

[RedMage125]

While I second Age of Worms, I have to say my favorite is something I'm borderline obsessed with, but have never gotten a chance to actually PLAY.

XCrawl. It was originally made as a 3.0 setting, but it's our world, if D&D elements were and had always been real. Dungeon Crawls are live Pay-Per-View events, and teams can have corporate sponsors, involve the live audience for morale bonuses, and more.

It's great for a drop game, where you don't need to have any coherent ties from room to room in a dungeon, but would also male for an interesting campaign, as all the game elements outside the individual crawls would be very different from a normal D&D game.

They did a PF1 update with a Kickstarter, called it "Maximum XCrawl", and it was also great. Plus, all the lore and much of the mechanics from the original are still good.

[vasilidor]

Checking the appendix for Creature Collection 1, it lists the CR of the Jack of Tears as 18. So yeah the listing of CR 10 in the stat block is the typo.
That said, I think I have figured out how to make him work as a Sphere Caster. Make his casting work like a level 18 Sphere Arcanist. This gives him 11 talents that he is stuck with and 9 talents he can change daily based on his needs. Or you can stick with 20 magic talents for being a level 18 sorcerer with having 36+ Charisma modifier spell points.
I figure a mix of Destruction, Creation and Mind talents would be his bread and butter, with his rod giving him a bunch of Life Sphere talents while he has a hold of it.

[Psyren]

The one I keep going back to is Grimoire of Lost Souls from Radiance House, which converted and updated the Binder class to Pathfinder. The class is great and the legends behind the various vestiges spirits and their powers are just fun to read.