Chris Sims on the FRCG

reutbing0 · Jan 13, 2008

Chris Sims talks about some of his work for the Forgotten Realms in this blog post. Here's the bit I find interesting:

“Lands of Faerûn” is the largest chapter in the Campaign Guide. It follows a nice, easy-to-navigate spread format, and almost every area includes an imbedded map of the region. Each entry focuses on places PCs can come from, pass through, and stay in, as well as cool experiences, sites, and plots to fuel DM imagination. It’s really the DM’s guide to Faerûn, and it acknowledges itself as just that.

Its second largest section is dedicated to threats, retaining some old foes, putting a new spin on some recognizable adversaries, and adding a few new ones. Szass Tam still stands as Abeir-Toril’s mightiest necromancer; the Zhents still plot in the shadows, hoping to reclaim lost glory; gibberlings still pour from the Underdark, but the Spellplague changed some of them. Along with these, surviving Halruaans ply a mercenary trade from a floating fortress and their few remaining skyships, and warlocks tied to a mysterious primordial entity rule Vaasa. And these aren’t the half of my work. They don’t even touch on the work Ed Greenwood did in describing the threats in his parts of the world.

The cool thing to me is that the Campaign Guide will be helpful on another level. In designing the threats, I took the approach that my design should supplement Paragon and Epic tiers, since the MM already has a great deal of support for Heroic-tier play. MM monsters are as much FR as they are D&D, and vice versa, so the FR threats can add to any DM’s toolbox. I’d happily use Manshoon’s statistics in my homebrew campaign, along with a lot of ideas for magic and such detailed in the Campaign Guide (and Player’s Guide for that matter).

I like that we'll be seeing a lot of maps and a focus on providing material that'll be used in play. The toolbox approach they're taking with 4e seems quite sensible to me. As someone who has always been somewhat overwhelmed by the vast anount of realmslore, this makes me much more likely to run a FR game.

Some of these 'threats' and how they're presented in the campaign guide would make for a great preview article

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Voss · Jan 13, 2008

Three things...

1- so there are still Zhents.
2- did gibberlings do that?
3- What ate Halruaa? I thought 'high magic' areas made it through the Spellplague fairly well. Or wasn't it popular enough to get the 'protection from writers' angle?

ferratus · Jan 13, 2008

Hopefully the mention of Manshoon means he is back on top of the Zhents again, and isn't Fzoul's Gimp anymore.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Jan 13, 2008

Voss said:
What ate Halruaa? I thought 'high magic' areas made it through the Spellplague fairly well. Or wasn't it popular enough to get the 'protection from writers' angle?

Pretty sure that it wasn't.

Badkarmaboy · Jan 13, 2008

Voss said:
Three things...

1- so there are still Zhents.
2- did gibberlings do that?
3- What ate Halruaa? I thought 'high magic' areas made it through the Spellplague fairly well. Or wasn't it popular enough to get the 'protection from writers' angle?

In the Dragon preview article Rich Baker said the Mythals protected some major sites, others weren't hit as hard.

I'm pretty sure, when I referenced Mythals, one of their features was "protection from writers".

That's got to be it.

Traycor · Jan 13, 2008

I'm most interested in hearing what has happened with Szass Tam, but I doubt we will since they want to save that for the novels.

JoelF · Jan 13, 2008

Of course Szass Tam is the most powerful necromancer in the realms.....there's no rules for them yet in 4E, so he's the ONLY necromancer!

Traycor · Jan 13, 2008

Poor Szass.... all that sceming and 100 years later he still hasn't accomplished anything.

Hehe. And they say fighters are underpowered. Those guys seem to conquer new kingdoms all the time! Poor little wizards seem to just be the punching bags.

Uzzy · Jan 13, 2008

Halruaa got removed because it didn't fit the core themes of the Realms. Not that they have defined the core themes, nor explained why Halruaa didn't fit them.

Also, do they have to describe everything as 'cool'. Someone get WoTC a thesaurus, please!

JohnRTroy · Jan 13, 2008

Actually, changes to Halruaa makes a lot of sense after a spellplague. Halruaa is a country of wizards, and it the laws of magic changed can you imagine the chaos in the society. Schools of spells changing, the new 4e traditions. It stands to reason a spellplague would cause a collapse in such a society.

Similar analogies--what would happen to the world of Harry Potter is a spell-plague hit and all the rules of magic changed? The school and the secret world of wizardry would be thrown into chaos.

A real-world analogy--we are fairly dependent on information in our society. What would happen if suddenly the Internet, Cable, and Telephone system was destroyed and a new one had to be built from scratch?

Chris Sims on the FRCG

reutbing0

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Voss

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ferratus

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Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero

Badkarmaboy

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Traycor

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JoelF

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Traycor

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Uzzy

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JohnRTroy

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