D&D 5E Ed Greenwood to write 5E's Forgotten Realms

Herschel · Jun 7, 2012

Incenjucar said:
Why not back to before that Time of Troubles nonsense?

Darn straight! It should be photocopies of napkin notes from Ed's original game! (must spread XP and all that)

Herschel · Jun 7, 2012

Elf Witch said:
I really disliked what 4E did with the Realms so I would hope that they fix that.

I have never understood the compliant about the high powered NPCs. First of all it is your game and you can choose how to use them or take them out completely.

The gaming police are not going to come and fine you for tweaking the Realms. And if you have players who can't deal with any changes to their beloved Realms well that is a player problem not a setting problem.

\
Conversely, there's nothing to "fix" with the 4E Realms, it's great. Just set your game in whichever era you want. Most of my Realms games (regardless of edition) are 4E setting but I have a 4E game set in the Gray Box era.

an_idol_mind · Jun 7, 2012

Drowbane said:
I'll look up that greybox module later to see if "Elminster showing up to heal the party" is even part of it... or if its something your DM used as a safety net.

The 2nd edition boxed set had Elminster pop in and accidentally heal the party. After a grueling series of encounters, the group finds Elminster (just described as an old man) trying to teach a dog to heel. Whenever he says "heel," his wand flickers and one of the PCs gets healed. The challenge is then to trick Elminster into saying "heel" enough times to heal the whole group.

Personally, I thought that was a good encounter. First of all, it came at a time when low-level characters likely needed some healing. Secondly, it showed Elminster as very powerful but also a bit senile, since he apparently had no idea that he was waving around a magic wand while trying to train a puppy in the middle of a perilous dungeon.

Drowbane · Jun 7, 2012

an_idol_mind said:
The 2nd edition boxed set had Elminster pop in and accidentally heal the party. After a grueling series of encounters, the group finds Elminster (just described as an old man) trying to teach a dog to heel. Whenever he says "heel," his wand flickers and one of the PCs gets healed. The challenge is then to trick Elminster into saying "heel" enough times to heal the whole group.

Personally, I thought that was a good encounter. First of all, it came at a time when low-level characters likely needed some healing. Secondly, it showed Elminster as very powerful but also a bit senile, since he apparently had no idea that he was waving around a magic wand while trying to train a puppy in the middle of a perilous dungeon.

Ah, interesting. Your portrayal does not seem so one sided.

I like the powerful yet senile mage archetype (aka, Fizban).

delericho · Jun 7, 2012

Rogue Agent said:
I have little patience with 1st level characters who think they're the Kings of the World. You want to deal with the kinds of problems that Elminster is dealing with? Work for it. You want to be as important as Han Solo? Earn it.

Except that they can't, ever.

Elminster is built with a whole bunch of specialised templates and rules exceptions such that it is impossible for a character to start at 1st level RAW and advance to match him.

Likewise, while Han Solo is typically presented in such a manner as to be technically rules-legal, his stats are so incredibly high that you would need to use random rolls and cheat to have a hope of matching him. Under the recommended chargen method from the books (and, incidentally, the required method for organised play), it is not possible to generate a "1st level Han".

The iconic characters in these settings are out of reach for PCs in the games intended to replicate their adventures.

But anyway...

"Oh no! My viking PC is totally trivialized by the existence of Thor!"

My big objection is not so much the existence of those high-level NPCs. It's that the text I quoted makes it clear that whatever they do, the PCs are largely irrelevant.

They saved the village? Why, if it weren't for Elminster, there wouldn't even be a village to save!

In fact, the only reason there are even adventures for the PCs to have is that the problems they solve are not important enough for Elminster to bother with.

It makes the PCs sidekicks in their own story. As I said, that text has no business being anywhere near a 5e Realms book.

KesselZero · Jun 7, 2012

I like the Realms; I've enjoyed a fair number of the novels and play a lot of Living Forgotten Realms nowadays. Those adventures tend to completely ignore the Big Name NPCs but still let the PCs affect the world, which is nice. Meanwhile the new season of Encounters featured Elminster personally speaking in the mind of my PC... a first-level kobold rogue. Like, really? He tells you to go get a MacGuffin then won't answer any questions. It feels super forced and awkward.

But my favorite game set in the Realms is neither of those. In it we've spent almost a year of real life time trekking from Murann to Athkatla, which we all constantly mispronounce as Athkatal. We saved Athkatla from being secretly controlled by the Shadow Thieves, who had infiltrated the leadership of the Church of Waukeen. We're currently questing to help our fighter create a legendary weapon that can slay a certain lich, and we picked up the claw of a Spellscarred Roc in the Cloud Peaks. After that we talked about swinging by Candlekeep just to check it out on our way north to Baldur's Gate but decided instead to pass between the Werewoods and the Snakewood to Scornubel, where one of our PCs is from. Oh, and I randomly tossed a die onto a big poster map of the Realms that our friend printed at work to see where my character is from, and it landed on Dambrath, which has a cool history of once being ruled by drow, but afterthe Spellplague was freed by a uprising of other races.

If Drizzt or Elminster or anybody else ever appears in our game I will probably poop my pants right there in Don's living room. We use the Realms as a fully-realized, deep-historied setting for our own games, about our PCs and what they want to achieve. The Realms has a heavy sense of place, of almost-reality, that serves as an inspiring backdrop to our stories, none of which have anything to do with going to Elminster for help solving our personal issues.

That said, reverse the Spellplague please.

Incenjucar · Jun 7, 2012

Drowbane said:
Every aspect of any RPG is "up to your DM". If your DM happens to be an asshat, your game is in trouble. Using Elminster to make the PCs feel small = Asshat DM, regardless of what is and isn't written into the setting.

Nah. A well-designed game is like Skill Focus. It won't make someone who took DMing as their dump stat good, but it will help someone who is mediocre pull off something good, and makes it easy for someone who is good to knock it out of the park.

And someone already filled you in on the horrible Elminster healing thing so yeah.

Elf Witch · Jun 7, 2012

Herschel said:
\
Conversely, there's nothing to "fix" with the 4E Realms, it's great. Just set your game in whichever era you want. Most of my Realms games (regardless of edition) are 4E setting but I have a 4E game set in the Gray Box era.

I would not mind if they did what they did with Dragonlance and let you choose what time you want to play in.

I just hope that the setting does not only have the stuff from 4e which imo ruined the Realms.

Rogue Agent · Jun 7, 2012

delericho said:
Elminster is built with a whole bunch of specialised templates and rules exceptions such that it is impossible for a character to start at 1st level RAW and advance to match him.

That's a separate issue (which also hasn't been true for all versions of the Realms) and has nothing to do with what your originally quoted.

My big objection is not so much the existence of those high-level NPCs. It's that the text I quoted makes it clear that whatever they do, the PCs are largely irrelevant.

The text actually says the exact opposite of that.

It's like claiming that any RPG set in the latter half of the 20th century makes the PCs "largely irrelevant" because other people have the power to declare nuclear war and render their accomplishments moot. (And if you actually believe that, you must not have a very high opinion of your own, apparently irrelevant life.)

I remain unimpressed with the whining.

Fenes · Jun 7, 2012

Elf Witch said:
I would not mind if they did what they did with Dragonlance and let you choose what time you want to play in.

I just hope that the setting does not only have the stuff from 4e which imo ruined the Realms.

You're not the omly one. 4E wrecked the Realms, and replaced detailed regions with barely-described clichee. The Realms are not 3 books, are not entire regions reduced to a single paragraph which offers no real information, but a tapestry of history and details that make a region come alive.