D&D General Forgotten Realms fans, what do you like most about the setting?

[R_J_K75]

I personally think Doom of Daggerdale is one of the best and underrated modules every produced for D&D.

Its been so long since I ran it that I remember very little of that actual adventure. I think any module no matter how good or bad it is written can be memorable, it all depends on the group playing it. Stardock was one of my favorites of the 2E era. I don't recall running too many premade adventures for FR though.

 

[beta-ray]

It may not be proper nowadays, but I like how it is vaguely Earth, but not. It's a kitchen sink, but one that folks can easily understand.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The sheer amount of information is a plus, IMO.

I compare it with a kitchen with nearly any ingredient and instruments you could ever want. You can do incredible recipes and explore many ideas. What you CANNOT do is put everything from the kitchen and put it in a creuset and hope/think it will turn out great!

I love that it is used as a lingua franca for D&D. If I go on a forum and I say one of my players is creating a cleric of Helm but wants to be a Trickery cleric, I dont have to spend hours explaining why I think this could be a bad fit.

I love that even payers who are not well versed in the lore can be thrilled if you drop a Big Name (and FR has a lot of them!) to interact with. Name dropping Xanathar gets you the same wide eyes in a FR game as encountering Darth Vader in a Star Wars game would.

I love that it is such a huge mess that nobody really cares if you butcher the canon because the canon itself doesnt make any sense anyway.

 

[cbwjm]

I love the lore, the setting has some cool cultures like Thay and Rashemen, or Chult or the ancient earth descendants of Unther and Mulhorand. It has a long history, some of which doesn't stay history, such as the return of Shade.

It also has one of the best campaign guides in dnd history with the 3e campaign book.

I like a lot of the locations like waterdeep and baldurs gate, the 4e version of airspur with its floating earth motes being integrated into the city.

I could probably spend quite a while talking about aspects of the campaign setting that I like.

 

[Elodan]

I love the lore and history. The Forgotten Realms feels “lived in”, much like Star Wars.

The kitchen sink aspect is a benefit. You can set any type of fantasy scenario in FR. The gods are fun and varied. If you want, there are interesting NPCs to grab. You can also ignore them.

 

[Retros_x]

I kind of feel sorry for new players that have come into the game with 5E and all the lore get is from the SCAG and adventures.

No need to feel sorry, I play often with new players and most of them are not even interested in reading the lore of SCAG. Lore deep-dives are not for everyone, I can speak of experience, because I hate it myself. The lore of FR especially is more hindering and intimidating IMO. In terms of lore and playability I prefer Eberron by a large margin.

And yet I like to return to the realms. If I want a "default fantasy campaign" its just so easy to just pick a FR module and off you go. Also a lot of players are also already familiar with the setting, because its so widespread.

 

[Parmandur]

No need to feel sorry, I play often with new players and most of them are not even interested in reading the lore of SCAG. Lore deep-dives are not for everyone, I can speak of experience, because I hate it myself. The lore of FR especially is more hindering and intimidating IMO. In terms of lore and playability I prefer Eberron by a large margin.

And yet I like to return to the realms. If I want a "default fantasy campaign" its just so easy to just pick a FR module and off you go. Also a lot of players are also already familiar with the setting, because its so widespread.

The main value of the lore, IMO, is as game prep tools. And the fact that my players are not FR loremaaters (my wife read a fair shake of the Driz'zt books, but didn't dive deep) makes it more usable for gaming purposes.

 

[Vael]

I do not consider myself an FR fan, but I do appreciate the familiarity and how well it has been brought to life in recent tie-in media. The movie and BG3 do more to get me into the realms.

 

[Retros_x]

The main value of the lore, IMO, is as game prep tools. And the fact that my players are not FR loremaaters (my wife read a fair shake of the Driz'zt books, but didn't dive deep) makes it more usable for gaming purposes.

I hear that often, but for me its ironically the other way around. Settings with deep and big lore like FR are more overwhelming and are actually slowing down my prep process. Especially if they have a meta plot ongoing. I always fear when a player in a FR adventure wants to know more about something related to FR history. "ok, roll a history check for me" - "NAT 20!!" - "Oh no...."

Thats why I prefer Eberron from a lore perspective, it has no metaplot, the default starting year is always the same since 3.5 and while it has also has complexity, everything is designed open-ended. The Eberron setting asks questions and leaves a lot of mysteries open, that makes it way more adaptable.

I had one large FR campaign where I often had the procedure of:

1) I need some fact of the world so either I flip thousands of pages or frantically google it.
2) If that happens not in prep, but mid-game its not really viable, so I make something up in the moment that sounds reasonable
3) ...
4) Not Profit (I realize what I made up now contradicts something else, so I have to change that other thing to something new, this now contradicts 10 other things etc.)

Luckily my players didn't even read the sword coasts adventurers guide and didn't realized most of my blunder. But it definitely stressed me out and doubled my prep time. I run only prewritten modules in FR now, but these I actually enjoy quite often, because they give me most of the stuff I need to run the game.

 

[Divine2021]

I’m one of those weirdos who go deep into a game setting’s lore, and Forgotten Realms used to have incredible lore. BG3 really drives this home—(it so drives home how good the lore in Tome of Foes was, but I digress). I don’t expect WoTC to go all 3/3.5 on us again when it comes to FR lore and stuff, but I’d gladly buy more quality Forgotten Realms stuff.