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You know, to this day I have never bought anything Forgotten Realms related. I know. Blasphemy. Unthinkable. I understand that it's WotC's prime-selling setting, and that thousands of people are personally invested in it and whether or not something called a "spell plague" should have taken place.... or something. But it has never interested me. To me it's the American Idol (I make deliberate transatlantic allowances there - I really mean X Factor, never having seen the former) of settings: a bland kitchen sink with no coherent theme or flavour. I really don't get why anyone cares about it. I do recognise that the majority of D&D players do care about it; some passionately so (like I care about Doctor Who, I guess - he's a friggin' Time Lord and Elminster wouldn't stand a chance: he laughs at your 3E Time Stop exploit) but I do not share that passion. Or even a slight percentage of that interest.
I may run the biggest independent D&D site on the internet - I dare say the biggest tabletop RPG news site on the internet - and I may have been playing D&D since I was 11 years old. I'm thirty-bloody-seven now. Married. Grown up. And I've played D&D all that time. That's a good 26 years. But I still couldn't tell you the first thing about the Forgotten Realms; it just never interested me. Sure, I know there's a ninja drow called Drizzt and Gandalf is called Elminster and he's, like, über and stuff. And some wizards are red and there's an Arabian bit. That's about it, though. I don't really know what this spell plague malarky is about. I'm not sure I want to.
Did I mention I ran the biggest independent RPG news site in the world? Yet I haven't the faintest clue about the biggest mine of WotC's intellectual property. I bet you'd fire me now if you could.
My intro was Dragonlance. Then I researched back to Greyhawk. Now they had flavour. There was a theme there. Mordenkainen, Bigby, and Tenser fired my imagination in a way that no Forgotten Realms character ever did. Who's the guy in Waterdeep or somewhere who appends his name with "the black"?
And Dragonlance - that fired up my teenage mind. I started with the novels. The Chronicles and then the Legends. There was a coherent story, and the characters worked for me. OK, reading them back at age of 37 - they're not great literature. George RR Martin and Scott Lynch are much better. But they did -to me - have a magic that the plethora of D&D books since has lacked. I'm not even sure I can pinpoint it, except that I imagine that it worked because it originally limited itself to stories about a select group of characters. Then it blew it. It followed the Forgotten Realms trajectory of introducing more and more and more until the original excitement became minor and mundane. But if I could jump in a TARDIS and cut Dragonlance off after the end of the Legends, it would remain fairly perfect in my nostalgic mind (as long as I didn't have to re-read them as an adult). Y'know, before the epic story was trivialised by ever escalating events 3 weeks later, and Darth "Vader" Soth was Anakinized with a wimpy personality. Boba Fett was cool till the prequels came along, guys. Now he's nothing.
I hear that the Forgotten Realms will be supported early in the 5E cycle. Again. Whoopy doo. Isn't it always? I was waiting for Greyhawk or Dragonlance I'm just getting FR again, which never interested me in the first place. Like I said, never bought a single FR branded gaming product, never will. I know little about it, and don't intend to. I admit I read The Crystal Shard trilogy (good, OK, awful) and the Menzoberranzan trilogy (good, awful, awful) and I may have gotten a chapter or so into a book about a cleric, but it never grabbed me.
If you like it, that's fine. I don't. Clearly most people do, otherwise it wouldn't be the primary setting over and over again. I accept that I'm atypical in this and that my lack of reverence for said commercial construct will give rise to ire and rage on the intranets. That's OK.
So, where are we? I don't like FR, and I recognise that DL only works in its initial storylines before it becomes FR-lite (though I'd argue that it's 25 years, and in that time a couple of potential customer generations who never read DL may get a thrill playing through it). So I'm left with Greyhawk.
Greyhawk as the default setting? Bring back the Circle of Eight? Do you remember those maps? The names? They had something. They really did. I don't understand why Elminster has taken Mordenkainen's place. Does he have any core rule spells named after him? No. Is it Elminster's Disjunction? No, we have Bigby, Rory, Tenser, and crew. Maybe everyone knows too much about Elminster; didn't he star in a book where he was a girl once or something? I never read it. But he's far from mysterious. There's no room for your imagination there.
In my opinion, Greyhawk should be the default setting in the new iteration of D&D. Especially if "retro' is the theme as it seems to be. It's sufficiently vague and undetailed enough to allow DMs to insert things without complication, while retaining an overall sense of coherent mtstery. Plus there should be an official adventure path, and that should be the Dragonlance one (yes, an adventure path can exist in its own setting; that enhances it - EN Publishing knows this, and Hickman and Weiss knew it 25 years ago). Us veterans will buy it out of nostalgia. The kids will have never heard of either, so those lucky buggers will get to experience the mystery of GReyhawk and the excitement of Dragonlance for the first time. Kinda like if I could rewatch all of nu-Who fresh, I would. But I can't, and I'm envious of those who have that in their future. FR? Give it a friggin' rest. It's boring!
Last edited by Morrus; 22nd January 2012 at 01:48 PM..
Russ, one thing I learned long ago is that different things appeal to different people. I have never really been into the Realms and I am more of a home brew setting sort of person myself, having played mostly in home brewed settings. However, I think that the Realms have had some good parts to them even if some of the decisions made about it have puzzled me.
I do agree with RangerWickett, you may have kicked up a hornet's next. As much as I have enjoyed parts of Greyhawk (I played some games in Greyhawk as well), it is hard to define what is Greyhawk. You can take people who like Gygax's initial release and find people who prefer Carl Sargent's After the Ashes. So, i am not sure that there is a version of Greyhawk or the Realms that will please all its fans.
__________________ What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding? -- Elvis Costello
I ran a FR 3E Campaign because those were the books my friends were reading at the time and I enjoyed some of the art and the style of the 3E books (they're gorgeous, the faux parchment is just too cool).
Really though I have no specific interest in it. I enjoyed Eberron more because it was weird, had lots of psionics, living golems, huge cities, etc.
I'd love to see a ton of real thorough support for greyhawk since I really missed all that. I remember seeing the gazette for greyhawk. I think it was for the rpga stuff back then? I'm not entirely sure now. but that's all I recall in 3E really.
So yeah. I support this. Let's see Greyhawk done 5E style. Planescape too!
As much as I love many of the classic settings, I really hope Wizards gives us some new settings for 5E. I want fresh, new ideas more than I want an update of the old stuff.
I enjoy the Broken Realms. There is loads of interesting stuff going on in the 4e setting. I was not emotionally attached to it in anyway to be irked by the changes.
Drzzt, Elminster ... couldn't care less about either of them. The main guy in my campaign is Strahd Von Zarovich. Yeah, I pretty much do with the FR Setting what I like, which in this case was to have Ravenloft begin to seep into it.
The only reason I can think of that they would go with FR from the start would be, to some degree, offer their hand towards fans who felt themselves alienated by the catastrophic changes their much loved campaign world suffered. Kind of like saying: "Sorry, we're putting things back together again". An offer of goodwill in a way.
But I would enjoy a new setting, I must admit. Greyhawk? Sure why not. Dragonlance ... sure, that could be fun. Ravenloft ... yess please!! (But they aren't going to come out the gate with a setting like that) Something else, totally open. In the end I tend to make the world my own in any case, using the campaign world to spark my imagination.
I guess if they are successful in this endeavor and have the entire community clamoring for more products we may see many of these products.
__________________ 'I am a predator...the predator improves the race...I kill but not out of hate.' Frank Herbert: Emperor God of Dune
My pedigree was reading Dragonlance, then reading Drizzt, then playing D&D, getting the boxed set of Forgotten Realms, and a boxed set for Dragonlance.
FR was too big. I enjoyed the drow novels, but only ever got interested in the rest of the setting due to the amazing production values of the 3e FRCS.
DL was nicely sized, but that might just have been a product of the fact that the DL novels I read traveled around more than the FR ones.
I have only the faintest impressions of Greyhawk, and that's just because I did research for a cartoon I pitched to WotC. In my mind, Eberron is more distinctive, because I've played in it. I've never read an Eberron novel, though.
People like whatever they've become emotionally attached to. Also, really well-done layout and art makes settings more vivid.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Director of the ZEITGEIST campaign saga.
The most cinematic adventure path for 4th Edition and Pathfinder.
Gee golly whillikers! Excellent post! I think the FR in their early generation were the greatest campaign setting that I've ever seen, a bit ahead of Greyhawk. I was my setting for more than a decade. However, it kept getting run through the TSR and then WotC and then WotC/Hasbro meat grinder. In the end, all that was left was low grade hamburger. I don't know whether you had to be intoxicated or not to kick this hornet's nest. But it was a great kick. Soccer players worldwide will be jealous, to say nothing of the Green Bay Packers! In the FR, one's supposed to say, "Well met!" Here it might be more appropriate to say, "Well said," or maybe even "Well kicked." Regardless, a very good piece.
__________________ Mark Oliva, the Vintyri Project (TM), a non-profit gaming service
Morrus...you really never played the Baldurs Gate PC games...I feel very sorry for you sir, that series is one of the greatest CRPG's in the existence of ever.
For a follow up thread that should have already exploded into hate from the FR faithful...I must add to those that agree.
I have been playing purely homebrew most of my life but something happened when I started up 4e. I found the "Point of Light" setting interesting because it started to merge several previous settings into one. Maybe not in great detail...but the thought was there.
I started to really get into the ideas of Ravenloft and Planescape and its ties to 4e core.
I hear they bastardized Planescape pretty bad (to fit the new lax alignment structure?) but the incorporation of Sigil into core 4e and the Domains of Dread in the Shadowfell hit a right note for me.
As far as I'm concerned, I DO think Greyhawk would make a great retro starting point.
I purpose the following:
5e core setting takes place as an alternate reality of what happens after 3e lore.
No spell plague occurs in FR.
No destruction of "The Wheel" from "Die Vecna Die" (that's how they explain it right?) All Planes go back to how they were in 3e
Planescape guilds were not kicked out by Lady of Pain, Planescape stays very true to what it was when it came out.
Greyhawk is core setting, but perhaps the Feywild/Shadowfell is worked into Greyhawk?. Can this be done without screwing Greyhawk lore? If not, perhaps incorporate the feel of those to places into "newly discovered" parts of the Greyhawk world? I'm spitballing here. Feel free to squish this idea Greyhawkers...
Ravenloft's Barovia once existed in Greyhawk. Account for its disappearance in Greyhawk lore...and perhaps expand on what was left behind.
Also, the Hollow World setting takes place deep beneath Greyhawk.
Sigil/Planescape is supported early on, it acts as a "bridge to anywhere" that merges Dark Sun, Eberron, FR, Dragonlance, The domains of dread (Ravenloft), and any new WoTC/Homebrew setting.
Spelljammer ships are used to travel the Astral Plane and hop planets without teleporting through Sigil.
These settings are all on different worlds, but part of one reality.
In another reality exists the various settings/story lines played out in 4e.
Sigil can optionally (DM's call) even merge these two realities. A character knows which reality they come from depending on if they can see the Spire of Outlands.
Thoughts
Last edited by zoggynog; 22nd January 2012 at 06:21 AM..
Don't post much but I felt compelled to on your subject matter. I love Greyhawk, the map is awesome, the Geopolitical drama between the kingdoms with definite borders make a better case for US VS THEM. The villains, who can trump Iuz, The Scarlet Brotherhood, or Iggwilv? Playing Greyhawk made me feel like I'm the hero, not just a small piece in a huge puzzle like Forgotten Realms. The only thing I dislike about Greyhawk is the deities.
P.S. (please dont strike me down ol mighty Tharzidun!)
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