Barastrondo
First Post
To me it looks like someone wanted an old house repainted and the furniture of two rooms replaced, and the decorator razed it to the ground and replaced it with a trailer, but uses the bricks from the old house for the storage shed and crammed the old furniture into the trailer.
Sure, but I think it's worth bearing in mind that "someone" doesn't imply "everyone," and it was less "decorator" than "landlord." (You can extend the simile further if you want by picking your least favorite elements of the setting and comparing them to wood rot or termites. In case you've always wanted to call Drizzt a termite but never had the context. I dunno.)
If the new setting is a trailer, then there's a lot to be said for modern trailer design; I find it a very impressive piece of work as far as providing a setting that is very welcoming to starting campaigns from the ground up. If that was their goal, as apparently it was, they've done an excellent job of it. The execution of getting there, via Spellplague and whatnot, that's pretty hard to make a call on. There are probably things I would have done differently (if I were a Realms devotee; bear in mind I'm kind of detached from the setting) on a personal taste level, and there are things that I think work pretty well as is. Here mileage is guaranteed to vary.