D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[prosfilaes]

Forgotten Realms gets flack for doing things a LOT of other settings do, to a greater or lesser degree. Lets take some of the classic criticisms leveled at it...

Yes, but you can say that about almost anything. The difference is always in what criticisms and saving graces matter to the person who is liking or disliking the thing. Also, of all the other settings you mention, only Golarion is an ongoing thing. You've got to hate Mystara pretty badly for it to matter, but FR is a big deal for anyone playing 5E.

Raistlin was literally killing Gods; take that Elminster!

Rastilin was confined to his own story arc and was a villain. The PCs were the driving power in the original DL adventure path with a world-changing ending, and could be so in any future stories.

Iuz says hi. Fizban would too if Paladine wasn't dead.

Likewise, it's easy to hate FR's Avatar era and not care as much about an single demigod or a Gandalf-style avatar.

In some cases, the feature may just be a problem in its FR form to the person; in some cases, the problem may just be a problem to the person, in any of its forms, it's just that FR was on the table at the time.

 

[Caliban]

Part of the problem is making the adventures so ingrained into FR. Yes, they have minuscule sections about adapting the adventure to other settings. But, all the maps are FR maps; all the NPCs are FR races, have FR names, and are tied to FR organizations; some monsters are FR-specific ones; and everything there is bound to FR history such that the LMoP and PotA actually include sections dedicated to FR history.

Every adventure set in FR feels like "Ugh. This again." because I have to sit down and figure out how much of the adventure can be adapted without requiring significant effort. And, frankly, if it requires enough effort I'm better off buying an adventure from someone else and saving myself some trouble in adapting it.

And yes, adventure adaptation is often going to be a headache for me because I typically run a homebrew setting. But, some things are far easier to adapt than others. This is why I'm so willing to snatch up the new Tomb of Annihilation, Chult is an island. I can throw it into the open seas of my world without significantly altering the world at large (I can even destroy the island when the adventure is concluded if its continued existence would clash with the themes and general feel of my setting).

So don't use their adventures. I certainly don't. Problem solved.

 

[MechaPilot]

So don't use their adventures. I certainly don't. Problem solved.

Solved? So then you have a list of adventures that will work for my games either as is or with minimal difficulty? I assume you don't, if for no other reason than you aren't familiar with the game I run. If, by some off chance you are legitimately psychic and do have such a list, by all means please link it.


The only thing "solved" by not using their adventures is the question "can I look to WotC for suitable adventures?" Saying the problem is "solved" by not using their adventures is like saying dinner is "solved" because one restaurant is closed. An adventure is still needed, and I still work and go to school. Or, to go back to the restaurant metaphor, people still gotta eat.

 

[Demetrios1453]

At which point are we no longer using Forgotten Realms?

If I ran a game where the players started in the Oasis town of Waterdeep where the last true dragon held off the Sorcerer-King’s armies from Thay… is that the Forgotten Realms?

I’ve got Waterdeep, Thay, evil mages, is that enough?

Probably not, being an oasis city means deserts, I’m not using the right map.

So, I’ll pull out the map. Game takes place in the Port City of Waterdeep which is ran by a Council of Gnomish inventors who have good trade relations with the Kender Lords of the Sword Mountains. The main villains will be the Lich Gondendes and his armies which reside in the Kryptgarden Forest.

Is it a realms game?

For the argument, a lot of people will say yes, of course it is, but no one who is asked if they want to play a Forgotten Realms game will think of this when they are asked. It isn’t really a Realms game, or even really based in the Realms.

The argument of “You can just ignore everything and it is still a Realms game” means one of two things to mean.

1) You care so little about the setting that it doesn’t matter what actually happens, in which case that is a poor reason to want to like a setting
2) You are just trying to win the argument.

You have to know something about the Realms to claim you are running a Realms game, and once you accept you have to know something, you really need to learn a lot to make it work. If instead you just ignore everything and do what you want, well, that’s fine... what about this setting makes it worth using then? IF it is so easy to just toss everything to the side... why use any of it at all then?

Consider the question asked then.

At which point do you think a campaign is no longer using the Forgotten Realms?

 

[Caliban]

Solved? So then you have a list of adventures that will work for my games either as is or with minimal difficulty? I assume you don't, if for no other reason than you aren't familiar with the game I run. If, by some off chance you are legitimately psychic and do have such a list, by all means please link it.

Sure. It's called "using your own imagination and stories" with a few index cards to mark monsters in the MM as you need and adjusting the monsters as needed to make them more interesting. Most are only going to appear for a single combat, so no reason to spend time working out an exact stat block.

The only thing "solved" by not using their adventures is the question "can I look to WotC for suitable adventures?" Saying the problem is "solved" by not using their adventures is like saying dinner is "solved" because one restaurant is closed. An adventure is still needed, and I still work and go to school. Or, to go back to the restaurant metaphor, people still gotta eat.

Learn to cook. Seriously, coming up with your own stuff isn't hard and it takes less time than reading and adapting prepublished adventures from a setting you don't like.

DM'ing a campaign on the fly in 5e isn't that hard, it's how I run 90% of my game sessions. Compared to 3e, it's a piece of cake (yay bounded accuracy). I know how the world works and who the major players are, the rest I come up with on the fly in response to player actions. Sometimes I'll spend a few hours statting out a major NPC or designing a new magic item or sub-class I had an NPC use, but that's all optional.

I haven't used a published adventure (unless I was running something for Adventure League or Pathfinder) in over a decade. I also work full time, play computer games for a few hours every evening, and play Adventure League on the weekend. I generally spend less than two hours actually prepping for the 4-8 hour gaming sessions I run every other weekend (as far as typing stuff up goes. I spend a lot more time thinking about it on my commute to work or when I have nothing else going on.)

 

[MackMcMacky]

I apologize if this has been said earlier...

Forgotten Realms gets flack for doing things a LOT of other settings do, to a greater or lesser degree. Lets take some of the classic criticisms leveled at it...

1.) Its too Generic.

Of course it is, its a kitchen sink setting designed to hold a LOT of baggage from 40 years of D&D growth. Greyhawk and Mystara have similar issues; they were used as the default setting for two editions. Nentir/Nerath and Golarion were DESIGNED for it. It make sense to have a setting where all options are available.

2.) Its a mishmash of tropes and real-world analogies.

Mystara says hi. Its the setting where you can describe whole nations with the sentence "its like X, but with the serial numbers filed off." (Where X = Medieval Iceland, Imperial Rome, Renaissance Italy, the Ottoman Empire, and Native American tribal lands; all sharing borders).

3.) It has Uber-NPCs and revolves around Meta-Plots/World-Shaking Events.

Dragonlance laughs and laughs... Krynn's meta-plot makes the Realms look like a thumbnail sketch, and Raistlin was literally killing Gods; take that Elminster!

Outside of that, even Greyhawk has the Circle of the Eight; which is "9 mean-spirited Elminsters" personified.

4.) Gods Walk the Land

Iuz says hi. Fizban would too if Paladine wasn't dead.

5.) It has funny names.

Verbobnoc, Garyx, Furyondy.

6.) It has high-magic Wahoo factor!

Eberron has magical trains. Mystara has airships. Have you SEEN the old Greyhawk modules and the magic items in those?



The inherent problem is that D&D was born of a "do-it-yourself" mantra that worked fine for some ardent enthusiasts (I know, I was a homebrewer) so any attempt to create a "unified" setting (be it Faerun, Oerth, Mystara, Nerath, or even "the multiverse") is going to meet with sneers and disdainful glances. Even Golarion (which is Pathfinder's kitchen-sink generic setting) gets a pass by most Pathfinder players. The Realms are not flawless, nor are they a good example of top-down design, but I really can't think of a setting that better encapsulates the whole of D&D's rules and fluff better than Faerun. Considering no setting will ever really be able to be "D&D's Golarion", might as well use their most well-known one...

1. I think you misunderstand Greyhawk if you think it is "generic" in the same sense as FRealms. Greyhawk has a definite feel to it. There is an attempt to recreate an essentially medieval fantasy world. There is a short timeline and historical narrative that explains where the ethnic cultures arrive into history and elegantly explains, without many words, why the Flanaess is the way it is. I see your point about Mystara and never ran a campaign in it. I do enjoy the Karameikos Gazetteer and think it may very well be the best of its kind.
2. Mystara is a mess in terms of where each of these cultures are located.
3. Dragon Lance sucks IMO. The Circle of 8 is not comparable to what the FRealms were doing and comes late to the party in the Greyhawk setting... and is very easy to ignore.
4. Iuz? Yeah, one in Greyhawk. And Dragon Lance sucks, IMO.
5. Who brought up silly names? (Fantasy without silly names... is that possible?)
6. Eberron is a different animal very clearly tailored to do something else. I didn't know airships were common in Mystara. They sure didn't come up in the modules I have. I have seen the magic items in old Greyhawk modules. The powerful ones often come with strings attached and the spells introduced in Forgotten Realms, as well as the design of priests in FR, represents an inflation of magical power over what exists in Greyhawk.

 

[Remathilis]

1. I think you misunderstand Greyhawk if you think it is "generic" in the same sense as FRealms. Greyhawk has a definite feel to it. There is an attempt to recreate an essentially medieval fantasy world. There is a short timeline and historical narrative that explains where the ethnic cultures arrive into history and elegantly explains, without many words, why the Flanaess is the way it is. I see your point about Mystara and never ran a campaign in it. I do enjoy the Karameikos Gazetteer and think it may very well be the best of its kind.

Don't get me wrong, I think Greyhawk does have a unique tone, but there is something wrong with your assessment:

The unique feel is not inherent to the setting itself, but overlayed by the DM. Case in point; ever read the D&D Gazetteer? Or The Adventure Begins? Near of them sell a setting of Sword & Sorcery or dark wonder, its actually rather... bland. You will probably say they are bad products (and I'd agree with you) but the fact Greyhawk so easily was scrubbed of those dark elements shows they are only tenuously attached and, lacking a good DM, easily lost. When removed of those elements, it fits the role of generic, default setting nicely. It takes a good DM to run Greyhawk as a setting of mercenaries, strictly neutral wizards, and rogues laughing over ill-gotten gains by night. Sadly, not all of that is inherent in the setting the same way Gothic horror is to Ravenloft or Sword and Sandals is to Dark Sun.

That said, I think (if they ever do leave Faerun) they should really play up the darker aspects of Greyhawk and leave FR to be the generic soup. Without those darker points, Greyhawk really just becomes "where the wizard names in the PHB" come from...

 

[billd91]

...then they would discover that these legacy settings are no longer supported.

Which at least means the publisher has stopped putting out contradictory information or changing things with every edition...

 

[billd91]

For those lamenting the FR-ness of the current edition of D&D - what's an alternative that's going to make sense from WotC's perspective of needing to make money with their publications? Certainly not supporting a plethora of alternative campaign settings. That's part of what helped burn TSR. More generic alternatives may work, but adventures work best and read better (as far as I'm concerned) if they're fit within a context already. And from WotC's perspective, I'll bet they're more fun to write if they're written within a particular setting context as well. Plus, I figure that setting-based adventures and setting materials encourage sales of each other.

So if you don't like FR-focused adventures, I suggest you resign yourself to get used to them unless WotC decides to shift completely to another setting (and then Iuz help you if you don't like that setting either).

 

[MackMcMacky]

Don't get me wrong, I think Greyhawk does have a unique tone, but there is something wrong with your assessment:

The unique feel is not inherent to the setting itself, but overlayed by the DM. Case in point; ever read the D&D Gazetteer? Or The Adventure Begins? Near of them sell a setting of Sword & Sorcery or dark wonder, its actually rather... bland. You will probably say they are bad products (and I'd agree with you) but the fact Greyhawk so easily was scrubbed of those dark elements shows they are only tenuously attached and, lacking a good DM, easily lost. When removed of those elements, it fits the role of generic, default setting nicely. It takes a good DM to run Greyhawk as a setting of mercenaries, strictly neutral wizards, and rogues laughing over ill-gotten gains by night. Sadly, not all of that is inherent in the setting the same way Gothic horror is to Ravenloft or Sword and Sandals is to Dark Sun.

That said, I think (if they ever do leave Faerun) they should really play up the darker aspects of Greyhawk and leave FR to be the generic soup. Without those darker points, Greyhawk really just becomes "where the wizard names in the PHB" come from...

If you are stuck with The Adventure Begins and the LGGaz I suppose I could see more of your point. I started with the Boxed Set and that is what I am referring to. It is far superior to any FRealms campaign setting book I've ever seen and it does do a good job of creating strong themes for play.