What's so special about Forgotten Realms?

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Since the question has been asked and answered about Greyhawk I decided I wanted to find out about D&D's other really big setting.

What makes Forgotten Realms unique?

And most especially for my benefit:
What type of person would most enjoy Forgotten Realms?

 

[Nymrohd]

The level of detail. OMG the level of detail. The world is massive, its history is extensive and very detailed. I know making an epic (in scope) campaign is FR may be hard for some people cause they simply end up thinking that some NPC should take care of it. But if you like reading through a setting more for the flavor of the setting than for actually playing in it, FR is amazing.

 

[pawsplay]

I was never a fan. But with the amount of detail put into it over the years, and the many, many fans, I consider what was recently done with it to be disrespectful. Why even call it FR?

Please see my post on the next page. Thanks! ~ PCat

 

[Leatherhead]

Volo's guides.

That and Elminster's pipe can TPK a low level party.

 

[Obryn]

I thought FR in its original, grey box, is one of the better "generic" fantasy settings out there. Much like with Greyhawk, it has an excellent map with varied terrain. The booklets give the perfect amount of information - enough to spur the imagination, but not so much that it overwhelms the DM. It also left vast areas open for DM development.

Adding a few of the regional supplements is great, too. They are, for the most part, wonderful books, light on mechanics but heavy on fluff.

In its original incarnation, FR didn't feel claustrophobic or crowded, IMHO. There are a few famous adventuring companies, but overall, it felt like a great kind of gaming world with a ton of elbow-room.


With that said, I tend to think that pretty much everything released for FR apart from these supplements was a detriment to the setting, and it got to the point where I didn't even want to look at it anymore. It crossed the line between "Sufficient information" and "Too much information" and the lore just became a burden, rather than a pleasure. YMMV.

-O

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

But if you like reading through a setting more for the flavor of the setting than for actually playing in it, FR is amazing.

Given that I don't get to do much playing these days this is actually a pretty good reason.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I was never a fan. But with the amount of detail put into it over the years, and the many, many fans, I consider what was recently done with it to be disrespectful. Why even call it FR?

Problem was, the detail was getting choking for new players and especially DMs. 3e FRCS was and is one of the best D&D books ever, but it's absolutely crammed full of stuff about the world. I think that some slate-clearing was necessary anyway, and with FR's history of Grand Sweeping World-Changing Events, they went reasonably well with it.

Anyway, there is very little "unique" about FR; it's a quintessential kitchen-sink fantasy setting. But I think that it had a certain hard-to-define tone of the setting: city-states strung along the trade ways, ancient sorcerous kingdoms of South and East, the importance of arcane magic to the history and the present. It didn't feel to me like the Medieval times, with magic and monsters pasted on, but rather a time of its own. (I think that 2e, with its pushing of vaguely disguised Earth cultures into the Realms, was something of a nadir for the setting.)

The FR elves were also one of the better takes on them outside of Tolkien; they had a quasi-Tolkienian glorious, epic past and are now fading out from the way of humans, but still remained D&D elves. (And, in the case of the gold elves, they frequently were arrogant, borderline racist twits...)

 

[Mercurius]

Short answer: Nothing really stands out as "special" about the FR, but it is detailed, generally well done, and relatively straight-forward D&D, with a nice Greenwoodian quality. In other words, it is "vanilla" D&D fantasy, but with a couple spices added in for flavor.

But it is more than that...I think what is special about the FR is that it includes just about everything within the D&D canon. There is a kind of jumbled messiness to it, like a building that has been added on to over many years. If you look at the map it doesn't even really make sense; mountains arise in short little ranges all over the place, with few major uniting chains (think the Rockies, Himalayas, Andes; everything is the Alps or, at best, the Appalachians). Pre-4ed is so ridiculously analogical to the real world, with versions of Egypt, Sumer, Persia, etc...

Despite the jumbled nature of the Realms there is enough to make it cohesive, from the distinctly Greenwoodian names like Impiltur, Anauroch, The Simbul, Waterdhavian (what's up with that?), and of course Faerun (fay-roon)...they somehow manage to be slightly silly and overall pleasing at the same time.

To put it another way, FR is not a slick chain bookstore like Borders or B&N, it is the huge jumbled independent used bookstore like Powells or the Strand that you can get lost in for hours.

Another nice thing about the Realms is that the 3ed hardcover may very well be the Nicest Campaign Book every printed...by anyone. Can anyone think of anything that is nicer? The Golarian book is nice, but doesn't quite have the diversity of the FR book.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The "jumbledness" of FR, in my opinion, made it better - it made it more realistic. History isn't this neat and clean thing where you just flip back a few pages and go "Oh, ok, now everything makes complete sense, and nothing contradicts."

FR stood out for being well fluffed and very complete in how well thought out it was.

I don't think you'll find many people who like 4e FR and liked FR in previous editions, if simply because, to many people, 4e FR took away everything that they liked about FR; it killed what made FR stand out.

 

[Obryn]

I don't think you'll find many people who like 4e FR and liked FR in previous editions, if simply because, to many people, 4e FR took away everything that they liked about FR; it killed what made FR stand out.

I don't think I'm a good data point for this.

I love the grey box, and I like the 4e version pretty well.

I don't care much for the 2e/3e Realms, OTOH.

So, yeah. 1e > 4e > 2e >= 3e

-O