Warning: There may be spoilers to some of the more recent FR plots herein.


I plan on buying both the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and the Player's Guide when they are released (with the judicious use of coupons at B&N).

My experience with the Forgotten Realms started with reading the novels during the 2E days. During 3E, I started to run a campaign which I based in the Realms. This is was when I started collecting the RPG materials. I have picked up and read every 3E sourcebook (exceptions: Lords of Darkness, Dragons of Faerun, Power of Faerun and The Grand History of Faerun; own, still need to read).

I was attracted to the lore of the world (I'm a big campaign setting fan). In addition, I liked the medieval feel of the world and the 'kitchen sink' approach to the world. If I wanted a campaign based around the plots of the nobility and the monarchy I could use Cormyr. If I wanted an Arabian Nights thing I had Calimshan. I enjoyed running my campaign there but I was about to abandon FR for another setting before the 4E announcement.

One of the biggest reasons I liked the Realms is the meta-plot. The world kept moving no matter what my PCs did. While the PCs could stop a Zhent plot in Secomber, the demon-fey could escape Hellgate Keep and cause havoc for Evereska. It made the world feel alive. This blessing was also a curse. The sheer number of recent Realms Shaking Events (RSEs) was getting to be too much. By the time you caught up on one, two more had taking place. By the time I had read about the return of Shade and figured out how to adapt it to my world, the dragon rage happens.

I have the option of ignoring those events but the problem is that later source books build upon these events. Eventually, these books become relatively useless to me. What's the point of using a living world if I'm diverging so far from existing canon I might as well use something like Eberron with a static time-line but has novels I can steal ideas or moving the world forward using the events they describe.


That said, I was pretty angry about the changes that were coming to the Realms with 4E. I told my players I was going to switch campaign worlds. I started a search for a new world to use. Eventually, I decided to come back to the Realms and give the 4E changes a chance. Here are some of my reasons:

Richard Baker
This guy took (and still takes) a hell of a beating on the WotC forums, but I think he did a very good job explaining the reasoning behind the changes. Most of his posts had me thinking, "Oh I never thought of it that way, that makes some sense" or "that would make an interesting adventure."

New Lore
The setting went through some pretty big changes. While some of the changes seem heavy-handed or hackneyed, there are stories behind them. This gives me the opportunity to learn these stories. I can even change the ones I don’t like without having to worry about a later sourcebook overwriting them.

More Focused Pantheon
I for one was not overwhelmed by the number of deities in FR but it was causing some confusion for my players. It was really difficult to explain the need for different deities whose profiles will so similar. While I'm not happy that the racial pantheons are going, I do like the idea of a smaller more focused pantheon. I like the idea of those deities that are not becoming part of the smaller pantheon are either aspects of the gods or will become a patron saint/demigod (unless they were killed).

Brian R James's Cormyr Article
This is what pushed me off the fence and into the "will buy" territory. While a fair number of the FR excerpts have been fairly bland, this article was extremely well done and demonstrated that while things were changing, not every change was going to destroy the Realms as I knew them. Brian proved that there are people writing for WotC who can take good care of the Realms.

Number of Sourcebooks
Finally, I do like that there will (supposedly) only be 2 RPG books released for the setting. It gives me a living world that I can move forward with the novels as I choose without those novels forcing their lore upon my world (i.e. later source books).


While I'm not thrilled with all the changes, I will be picking up these books and giving them a chance in my 4E campaign (worst comes to worst, I go back to 1372 DR).

Elodan

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted a blog. I'm going to probably ramble a bit here.

Since I've never really blogged before I'm not sure if there are "rules" to what goes here. I'm fairly certain there are no real "rules" when it comes to blogging but here are some of my thoughts.

Is it bad form to go a long time between blog posts? I have no central AC (only in the bedroom where the computer is not) and for the past few weeks it's been too hot in the Northeast to sit in front of the computer at home to type something up. It takes me a while to write one of these things up (45 minutes to write this one). I'm always rethinking my wording. [There used be a another section here but it wasn't really related to the topic on hand so I removed it. See, always rethinking].

It's tough to determine (for me at least) if something should go into this blog or in the forums. The other night I was watching Robin Hood on BBC America and thinking how much I was enjoying this season (2). The first episode with the sheriff's sister had me thinking of giving up the show but it really picked up after that. There has been a lot of interesting storylines and some good character development. I was thinking that there really had been no forum posts about this season (I don't remember seeing any). I debated starting one but, unlike a Lost or Battlestar Galactica, I'm not sure how much discussion would happen. Robin Hood doesn't really get into a lot of issues, it's just an enjoyable show. Most shows I watch probably fall into that category.

I went to Barnes and Noble the other night, picked up about $30 of paperbacks to add to my growing out of control to be read pile (~50 novels and ~25 RPG books. I picked up a lot, if not all, of the RPG books on eBay). While browsing, I noticed B&N had a lot of 4E stuff and about the same amount of 3E. I wondered if the 4E stuff was or was not moving and how much the big discounts at Amazon and Buy.com kept those books on the shelves. I was also surprised by how much 3E goodness was still there to be had. Were these observations blog-worthy or post-worthy (I have no idea). Because I keep internally debating to post or not to post eventually nothing happens. It's interesting because at work I much more decisive, much more of a 'go for it and damn the consequences' type person (that's what database backups are for).

Another internal debate is to post or not to post my thoughts on the various RPG books as I finish reading them. I own and have read all of the 3E Forgotten Realms stuff, every Necromancer Games adventure (just the general outlines with these as Dave collects these and may want to use them for his campaign) and a lot of the WotC splatbooks and supplements. I'm currently reading through Eberron, Paizo's Pathfinder Modules, some Green Ronin books (including thieves world), some d20 modern and more splatbooks. Just finished Dungeonscape and am about halfway though the Players Guide to Eberron.

Of course, there's the natural shyness thing to overcome (even when posting semi-anonymously on message boards). I've mentioned previously how I send an email 'blog' to all my former coworkers I want to keep in touch with and have found it somewhat therapeutic to put word to (electronic) paper. I've been complemented on my writing style because I write how I talk. I just need to get over the hump here and post.

Enough rambling for now.


As for the three of you following my group's experiences with 4E, not to worry I have most of sessions 3 and 4 written, I just need to finish writing up session 2 (I'm working on it now, I swear).

Elodan

Before we get to our first experiences with 4E, I'm going to try and give a brief history of my group. We're all currently local to the greater Boston (MA) area.

The current group (with their general Robin's player type) consists of

• Tom (me) - the butt kicker, rotating DM
• Kevin (my brother) - hard to classify as he runs the gamut, rotating DM
• Lance - the tactician
• Ed - the causal gamer
• Bob - the power gamer
• Dave - the specialist (rogues), rotating DM
• Murph - the causal gamer

The Beginning
Around 1980 (maybe earlier, maybe later - I did say around) when I was in either 5th or 6th grade, my brother Kevin (11 months younger, Irish twins) went to a school in Cambridge that had a mentor/tutor-like thing with their students and some students at Harvard. He introduced Kevin to D&D who then introduced me to it. Soon we were playing OD&D with Kevin's friend Lance. Not long after we moved to 1E AD&D. A few others joined us on occasion. At this time, Kevin was our only DM. His campaign was in his own home-brewed world. Kevin's a good DM. I'd say his one weakness is that he'll throw a challenge at us and refuse to acknowledge we're not getting it.


Hiatus
We stopped playing while I was in college. No real reason for us to stop as we were all still local. We just did.


Getting the Band Back Together
About a year after I graduated Kevin mentioned playing D&D again. Some time before a new version (2E) had been released. Kevin's roommate Ed and his friend Bob and wanted to give it a try. Lance and I were back in. While Kevin was in basic training for the naval reserve, Bob became DM. Bob does a good job of running things but eventually his campaigns tend to become monty hauls.

A few years later, at a Con in NH, Dave ran us though the Tomb of Horrors. Our play styles meshed well. We found out he lived close to the rest of us and invited him to join the group. We're lucky because Dave is another good DM. I'd say his weakness is that once in while he needs prodding with his pacing (damn dwarf riding halflings). Now we had two campaigns to rotate between. Dave's is grim 'n gritty based in pre-wars Greyhawk and Kevin's more standard based in his world.

During his time in the reserves, Kevin met Murph who lived in the same area as the rest of us and joined our campaigns.

At this time I gave running a game a try. I went with high fantasy based in the Forgotten Realms. I'd say my biggest weaknesses are running NPCs and PC killing. I became known as the spiteful DM. If the players beat my bad guys or such, I'd throw a spite monster out there (my favorite was the mimic. the guys started saying my favorite monster was the spiteful mimic). For some reason, they still let me run a campaign.

Our most memorably adventures and characters were born in this era.


The Arrival of d20
Eventually, news of 3E came out. We were all pretty excited, we liked what we were hearing in the previews. We actually made out first ever trip to GenCon.

We switched all of our campaigns to 3E and Kevin added a d20 Modern (not too distant future) one to our rotation. After a few years, Kevin stopped his D&D campaign and began running more one-offs using HackMaster (a fun and well done off shoot of AD&D). A hint about his feelings about 3E none of us picked up on. He kept his d20 future one going. I also started a mixed Arcana Evolved/D&D high fantasy campaign based in the Realms (hold the spite).

Good gaming all around and four different campaigns to enjoy.

Elodan

As you can see by my post count, I don't usually post a lot to these forums (or any online forums really). Before some board troubles, I had a good (IMO) thread as to the reasons I posted so infrequently.

I'm going to sort of rehash some of them here so you know where I'm coming from. Generally, I'm a very shy person. Even posting anonymously, it's very hard to break out of your shell. Although once I'm comfortable with you, watch out. By the time I built up the courage to post, someone else had chimed in with my thoughts on the issue but worded so much better. If something pissed me off, I would refrain from posting until I could cool down and by then, see previous reason. Then there were the times you would start or participate in a thread and be ignored, so the next time you'd have "why bother" in the back of your head. Some board have cliques which make it daunting for outsiders. Luckily, ENWorld is one of the most welcoming boards out there (which is why I feel comfortable attempting this blog).

This is my first online blog. For a few years now, I've sent an email to my former co-workers (those I want to keep in touch with) with what I would consider a blog detailing my (and the wife's) latest doings and happenings. I do find writing things out to be therapeutic-like and a good way to keep people informed. Here, I plan on blogging about my group's experiences converting/playing 4E D&D, general gaming thoughts (role playing and board) as well as feelings about sci-fi/fantasy books, movies and tv.

Hopefully, this blog won't be too rambling and will be an interesting read. Speaking of which, how do you know if anyone is paying attention to this thing?

We're 3 sessions into a 4E tryout. I'll post thoughts on the first one soon. Until next time.

Elodan