Things I Like About the Forgotten Realms

[dbb]

Obligatory joke: "Well, this ought to be a short thread."

More serious part: The Forgotten Realms, taken en bloc, kind of sucks. Actually, strike the "kind of"; it actually does suck. There are various reasons for this that I won't go into too much detail about -- my personal peeve happens to be the ginormous amount of power inflation, where the world is crammed so full of archmages and Epic characters and evil masterminds that essentially anything your character gets to do (unless he's already on that level) is janitorial work that you do because no one more important is interested enough.

But that's not the point (although it can be fun to rant about); everyone probably has their own individual peeves with the setting, even those people who don't think it's ass. The point is that there are some parts of the setting, whether they be ideas, locations, organizations, whatever, that I actually do like.

As a case in point, I've been rereading Unapproachable East lately. Now, much of this book is unmitigated bullshit -- it is, after all, the source of the Nar Demonbinder. And it deals with some of the more eye-rollingly dumb parts of the world, e.g., Aglarond, the country ruled by Ed Greenwood's in-game alter-ego's, um, "friend with benefits", the 32nd level sorceress; and Thay, home of eeevil wizards who want to own the world and have more mojo than you.

But there's also a tidy little section on the Great Dale. It's just this shallow valley sandwiched between two enormous forests, full mostly of farmers and sheepherders with basically no towns larger than about 200 people and precious few of them. It's got a frontier, edge of the world sort of feel to it. There isn't any government. There aren't any overweeningly powerful organizations ready to handle everything that needs to be handled -- there's just a few thousand farming families trying to live and raise their children and live their lives despite the harsh environment and the monsters that live in the woods.

True, there's a gang of druids hanging out in one of the forests, led by the usual stupidly powerful guy (in this case, a 28th level druid ), but it's just the one guy and his flunkies and in any case, they're druids -- which means they're probably more likely not to give a damn about your problem. And true, there's a BBEG in the other forest who's busily engaged in beating the tar out of the druids, but I don't mind having high-powered bad guys nearly as much as I mind high-powered good guys -- they give you someone to look forward to beating. True, there are the ruins of ancient empires all over the place, but they're ruins, and the actual empire's influence is nowhere to be found -- so it's just a whole bunch of dungeons, which is good.

It has color and life and there's something about it that has a deep appeal for me. It'd be a marvelous setting for a game where family and home mean something in a way that they rarely do for D&D campaigns.

I can't stand the Forgotten Realms. But I'd sell my own kidney to play in a good long-term campaign set in this corner of it.

--d.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

Thing about the Realms is that, were it not bound up mechanically with D&D, it'd be a decent setting. Like you said, Dbb, the Realms has its fair share of cool places and ideas. Yes, there are way too many Ohmigod-I'm-an-evil-monster-race-who-wants-to-destroy-the-world-arrgh! kinds of races (I bet anyone with three sessions or more of Realms experience can name at least five), but, to compensate, when I decided to try to run a Realms game a few years ago, I was torn.

I wanted to run a gutter-level Waterdeep game, a heroes of Silverymoon game, a defenders of the Dalelands game, a pirates of the Moonsea game, a barbarians of the east game, and an evildoers of Thay game… all at once.

Any setting that permits all that has to have something going for it, if only a massive amount of indecision… which can make for good gaming, by the way.

My players eventually decided on the heroes of Silverymoon game, which went well. The Silverymoon book wasn't out yet, so I made the city a little darker than it was later depicted (i.e. instead of ridiculous restrictions like, I think, no fire in the city, the will of the ruler was enforced by a cadre of invisible wizards… my players still look around for "invisible wizards" now and again).

And I still think--with the right group and the right attitude--playing a vicious, backstabbing campaign wherein all PCs are future red wizards of Thay would be stupid awesome.

[Josh_Kablack]

Amazingly, every one of the D&D games I have played which was actually set in the Realms was pretty decent - although in most of these, it wasn't a big deal that they happened in the Realms.

[Book]

Having hated the Realms for my beginning years in D&D, I've finally come full circle and have really enjoyed my last 2 campaigns (hosted by FR-centric gaming groups).

The Realms fan base and web communities are incredibly impressive in their dedicated passion and breadth of immersion in Realmsian lore and genre continuity. Candlekeep.com has become one of of my favorite sites.

Yes, FR zealots can be pompous, conceited, and canon-strangled at times, but they are immensely helpful in facilitating the knowledge and know-how you need to run a successful campaign.

That said -- anybody have any recommendations for any online play-by-post Realms games?

[MrWaeseL]

I like how the entire world is already statted out. That way I can get the boring out of the way and spend all my time figuring out good reasons to have really weird combinations of monsters and classes as encounters

[Username17]

The Realms is like a box of Every Flavor Beans. Sometimes the flavor is "grass", sometimes it is "cjocolate pudding", and soetimes it is "vomit". Faerun has been going strong for over 20 years and has had literally dozens of contributing authors writing for it continuously during that time - the place contains everything that seemed cool to any of dozens of fan boys at any time since the Reagan administration.

And some of that stuff is legitimately cool. Some of it is retarded, and some of it is just incongruous. But remember how in the What Are You Supposed To DO? thread fbmf said tha it was easier to scale an encounter down than to scale it up? It is for some people.

For some people it is actually easier to remove a lich that isn't needed than it is to add one that is. And the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is for them. Now in the FRCS, you'll have to remove a lot of Liches, because there's one in essentially every hectare of the planet, someimes simply cilling in a tavern basement or behind a false wall in a library (literally).

For other people, adding fantasy bullshit isn't hard, and telling players that despite a printed source material they can't buy kobold laser battle armor from the last age in a city is a whole platter of grief and bad feelings that they don't need. For these people (myself included), I suggest playing on Earth, and adding fantasy monsters and magic items to taste. That's basically what FRCS is, only it's to the taste of like 40 teenagers and dirty old men that I often don't respect.

The FRCS has the stats for the gods from Conan. And the gods from Greyhawk. And it has multiple serpent-people conspirasies. And it has low, medium, high, and epic charcaters ready for use in literally every single location on te planet. If you'd rather pare the setting down to what you actually intend to use - this is the setting to play in. If you intend to build the setting up to what you want to use - this is the setting to avoid.

-Username17

[Book]

Conceptually, the Realms already has all the sexy "new" gimmicks that Eberron claims to originate. It's just that the Realms never had them statted out. Areas like Halruaa already fuse high magic and quasi-science. And Lantan seems even more a home to Artificers than any specific area in Eberron.

The Realms can easily port in anything from Greyhawk or Eberron. I can't say the same in reverse about the other 2 settings.

[RandomCasualty]

1145659426[/unixtime]]Conceptually, the Realms already has all the sexy "new" gimmicks that Eberron claims to originate. It's just that the Realms never had them statted out. Areas like Halruaa already fuse high magic and quasi-science. And Lantan seems even more a home to Artificers than any specific area in Eberron.

The Realms can easily port in anything from Greyhawk or Eberron. I can't say the same in reverse about the other 2 settings.

Well yeah, the thing with FR is that as Frank said, it has basically everything you can imagine. You can theoretically plug in anything you want to an FR campaign. The downside to FR is also the very same thing, that it has everything. So you'll get some crap you like and some you hate.

It's a great setting for beer and pretzels generic adventures, but as far as telling a coherent story, I personally don't like it much. There are just too many high powered NPCs in the realms to have low level PC adventurers remotely believable.

[power_word_wedgie]

1145635500[/unixtime]]
The FRCS has the stats for the gods from Conan. And the gods from Greyhawk. And it has multiple serpent-people conspirasies. And it has low, medium, high, and epic charcaters ready for use in literally every single location on te planet. If you'd rather pare the setting down to what you actually intend to use - this is the setting to play in. If you intend to build the setting up to what you want to use - this is the setting to avoid.

-Username17

Franks right on this regard, and that's why I like the setting. I've got the a mind of mud when it comes to making up my whole campaign world and thus appreciate it that it is already pre-made. As for high-powered NPCs, I'm not all that freaked out by that - as a DM I can rationalize it.

[dbb]

I suspect that FR is a lot more usable the less obsessive your players are. If they're the kind of people who read every scrap of published information, it'll be a pain because they'll have their own preconceptions about what the world's like, even if this instance of it is significantly different.

--d.

[Book]

DBB, after re-reading the entry for the Great Dale in the UE book --- I have to agree, that looks like a really cool place for me to revisit some campaign ideas. I've done some Thay-Rasheman campaign hooks in the past. As well as some Vaasa-Damara conflicts in the Bloodstone Lands.

But the Great Dale ... that reminds me of my beloved Vermont quite a bit.

[dbb]

Maybe it's an East Coast thing -- I was born in New Hampshire.

[PhoneLobster]

I've always kinda liked al'quadim. I'm a long time fan of the whole 1001 nights stuff.

Which at some point was somehow incorporated into forgotten realms. Then forgotten, then used to make an al quadim flavoured sucky provinve or something in FR proper. Then continualy screwed like everything ever.

Similar story with other stuff like the oriental adventures setting etc...

My opinion of FR itself is not great.

[User3]

With all the commercial success of the Forgotten Realms, it seems the non-Faerun part of Toril never really caught on to the FRCS masses. Maztica, Kara-Tur, Al Qadim, etc.

My guess is people preferred their Realms to be more Euro-centric.

Although I do think that a significant investment into Kara-Tur would reap benefits for WotC due to the never ending fascination with Asian-flavoured gaming material. You know, ninjas, samurais, etc.

[dbb]

I think there's a couple of things at work with the non-Faerun expansions. One of them probably is some degree of eurocentricity -- the knight in shining armor, mysterious wizards, and so forth are well-established in the public consciousness. People don't like to feel ignorant, especially when they are. Playing in cultures that are made-up doesn't bother people, because nobody else knows more about it than they do. Playing in cultures that are obviously and intentionally adapted from real Earth cultures does bother people, and it also creates potential cultural sensitivity problems. If you doubt me, check out the preface to the 3E OA book, where they implicitly apologize for the fact that the 1E version was written from an extreme (sometimes comically so) Western perspective.

Another is that a lot of the expansions feel, and sometimes are, tacked-on. Kara-Tur dates from the pre-Realms 1E days, after all, and when I read that it was henceforth going to be located in the FR, I rolled my eyes. Al-Qadim used to be an independent setting, too, from what I remember, and then got pasted into the Realms. Both introduce new game mechanics, new classes, new skills, etc., etc., to the point where they're almost alternative PHBs rather than just expansions to the setting. That's confusing to and extra work for casual players and it's annoying to just about everybody, just because now there's more stuff to keep track of and some of the things from the PHB are still in play and some aren't and so on. And let's not forget offending the sensibilities of players who don't see why you need a "samurai" class to play someone whose campaign role is a samurai -- the expansions are some of the worst offenders in the game in terms of confusing campaign roles with game mechanics, something that has done immense and long-lasting damage to the game as a whole.

Maztica and the Horde aren't quite as offensive mechanically (although they're not entirely innocent -- remember the Hishna and Pluma magic from Maztica?) but they feel even more tacked on, to the point where it's blindingly obvious that someone said, "Hey, we have this fantasy world, why don't we throw in some cultures that allow us to do explicit analogues of the Mesoamerican conquest and the Mongol hordes?" Faerun isn't Earth, and throwing this stuff in as if it were directly transferrable makes for the infelicitous combination of lecturesome and lazy. That these two sets in particular make for some of the more annoyingly obtrusive sections of the FR metaplot only adds to the agony.

Finally, a lot of the material in question just isn't that great.

I don't think Kara-Tur material will ever make money for WotC on a big scale as long as it's kept in the Kara-Tur ghetto. I think they could reap much more benefit from integrating the ninja/samurai/etc. elements more directly into the core rules and setting. Of course, the more such integration they do, the less ability to sell new "expansions" they have, so maybe not.

[RandomCasualty]

Honestly I never really saw the point of combining Kara-Tur, Al'Qadim and the rest of the crap into one setting. While a lot of people like ninjas and stuff, almost nobody wants to have ninjas travelling with full plate armored knights, cleric crusaders and Arabian sailors.

Mixing settings generally produces crap for storylines. Since you've got a bunch of guys from the other setting with essentially no background and no connections.

[User3]

C'mon now. We're playing make-believe here.

While that may be true for more one-dimensional casual gamers, immersion gamers can really do some interesting background and connectivity interlacing.

I personally think D&D gets more interesting once you start getting really offbeat group composites together for fun and games.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

1145819514[/unixtime]]Honestly I never really saw the point of combining Kara-Tur, Al'Qadim and the rest of the crap into one setting. While a lot of people like ninjas and stuff, almost nobody wants to have ninjas travelling with full plate armored knights, cleric crusaders and Arabian sailors.

Mixing settings generally produces crap for storylines. Since you've got a bunch of guys from the other setting with essentially no background and no connections.

Because, yanno, the Romans never went into Egypt or England, Renissance Europeans didn't go to Africa or the Middle East, the Orient or The Americas, or anything like that. So it'd be utterly unrealistic to have anything but a monocultural fantasy setting.

-Desdan

[User3]

Ya, the amount of culture shock a campaign can take varies wildly. Al Quadim could incorporate characters from just about any setting, because it was based on the real-world mideast.

Basically, the more cosmopolitain the setting, the more room you have for odd characters. In Sigil, for example, no character is seen as 'out of place.'

Once you start dealing with New Hampshire, culturally different characters start looking out of place.