Forgotten Realms...

[telepox]

A statement made out of total and utter ignorance.

Aside from an extra item or two at 1st level, as Sean K Reynolds pointed out, NOWHERE does it say that characters should get more magic items then in standard D&D. NOWHERE. Can you point out where it says otherwise? Can you point out where it says that Forgotten Realms characters are supposed to have double, triple, quadruple, etc the number of magic items than in a standard D&D campaign?

You can't because such a statement doesn't exist. Nowhere does it say in the Realms rulebooks that characters are supposed to have an unending supply of magic items, as you imply with your statement. As Sean K Reynolds also pointed out, NPC's in 3E are constructed with equipment equal to what a normal character of that level would have, as presented in the DMG. As such, Artemis Entreri for example has no more than any other standard 18th level character.

Try to get some actual FACTS before you bash something.

And for those who think no role-playing goes on at higher levels, you may want to read a thread in Story Hour called "Lady Despina's Virtue". High level and powerful characters, yet most of the game has involved heavy role-playing on the part of the characters. Hell, in all that has been posted so far, there hasn't been a single combat. Munchkin, indeed!

Did I equate magical socks and underwear with FRCS? No.
Did I say that FRCS should load players with a never ending supply of magic items? No.
Did I say once that NPCs in the FRCS were way overloaded with magic items? No.
Do first level characters get bonus magic items by region and do most house holds in the "Heartlands" have some form of mundane magic item? Yes.
Were your comments misdirected and juvenile?
Did you write the FRCS yourself?

 

[telepox]

Officially, I actually agree with the earlier poster. The FRCS 3E has seamingly toned down the high magic feel. Many of the "save all" spells that some of the epic NPCs had are changed or gone. The novels do lace the world with magic, though, even if they are based on the best of the best. Compare Dragonlance novels. I wonder which evil power group will take over the world though.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

High Fantasy = Low Intelligence?

The prejudices don't come so much from the crappy novels but from the ridiculous power level of the NPCs and organizations in the setting itself. When every NPC in a position of power is a 20th level archmage or high priest with super-duper magic items, "chosen of the gods" templates, and a gazillion magic items at their disposal, it's obvious that in order for your players to make any difference in the setting, they must compete with these uber-munchkin NPCs. The NPC rulers are all designed to be invincible to "maintain the setting and characters as Ed Greenwood envisioned them," IMO. So players have no chance to change anything as written. The gods themselves will lay down the smack if their uber-chosen NPCs are messed with. So you can't win. If you do, you aren't "running the Realms as intended."

In FR, magic and monsters are everywhere and so there is nothing special about finding a +1 sword or meeting a troll. It's poorly thought out and extremely juvenile. It feels more like some 40 year old fan boy's wet dream than a real, living, breathing world... Which is why it appeals to so many gamers, I guess.

More intelligent, researched and detailed settings like Harn, Greyhawk, Glorantha, etc., aren't as popular because they appeal to older, sophisticated gamers, not young teenage kids who just want to smack things with their +10 vorpal blades and don't give a damn about RPing, historical accuracy or anything else because they just don't know any better... yet. Hopefully, some day they will. And when they do, they will abandon settings like FR for one of the ones I mentioned before or a homebrew, or another game altogether. +10 vorpal blades wielded by 150th level fighter/cleric/wizard/assassins are only fun for so long, after all.

All this said, I don't think FR is "complete" crap... it's unusable as written without major tweaks for anyone with a maturity level above 18 years, but certain elements are interesting, such as the Church of Bane, Red Wizards, Damara's political crisis from 1e... It's all the uber-lameness of the munchkinisms that kills FR, drowned in a sea of ridiculousness: Skullport, Undermountain, Waterdeep, Shades, Elminster, Beholders everywhere, godlike NPCs, Shadowdale, Time of Troubles, Cormyr, Harpers, too much treasure and magic items distributed like candy, Halruua, too many gods... I could go on and on. The fact that they keep changing things every few years instead of providing a stable environment drives me nuts too. In Harn, the year in official products is always 720... It never changes, so that what they publish won't ruin your campaign. From 720 on, the world is entirely your own to do anything you want with. No published material will ever contradict what you have done as DM. That is a welcome relief after being messed up by pinheads in FR with the Time of Troubles and other nonsense! There are no stupid novels that become "canon" even if you've never read them like with FR. I don't object to novels per se, but they should never be incorporated into the setting. I don't read them (Spellfire and Curse of the Azure Bonds were enough to turn me off forever to any TSR novel).

I do think the FR team dropped the ball with keeping FR a munchkin's paradise and the 3e team made a mistake by not including better world-building and historically accurate setting details in the DMG... From reading the DMG, one would have only the vaguest of notions of how a medieval world works. D&D 3e is too wrapped up in a video game "back to the dungeon" mentality to care, and everything they have released certainly points to this fact. *sigh*

Anyway, that's my anti-FR rant for the night.

 

[telepox]

Re: High Fantasy = Low Intelligence?

The prejudices don't come so much from the crappy novels but from the ridiculous power level of the NPCs and organizations in the setting itself. When every NPC in a position of power is a 20th level archmage or high priest with super-duper magic items, "chosen of the gods" templates, and a gazillion magic items at their disposal, it's obvious that in order for your players to make any difference in the setting, they must compete with these uber-munchkin NPCs. The NPC rulers are all designed to be invincible to "maintain the setting and characters as Ed Greenwood envisioned them," IMO. So players have no chance to change anything as written. The gods themselves will lay down the smack if their uber-chosen NPCs are messed with. So you can't win. If you do, you aren't "running the Realms as intended."

In FR, magic and monsters are everywhere and so there is nothing special about finding a +1 sword or meeting a troll. It's poorly thought out and extremely juvenile. It feels more like some 40 year old fan boy's wet dream than a real, living, breathing world... Which is why it appeals to so many gamers, I guess.

More intelligent, researched and detailed settings like Harn, Greyhawk, Glorantha, etc., aren't as popular because they appeal to older, sophisticated gamers, not young teenage kids who just want to smack things with their +10 vorpal blades and don't give a damn about RPing, historical accuracy or anything else because they just don't know any better... yet. Hopefully, some day they will. And when they do, they will abandon settings like FR for one of the ones I mentioned before or a homebrew, or another game altogether. +10 vorpal blades wielded by 150th level fighter/cleric/wizard/assassins are only fun for so long, after all.

All this said, I don't think FR is "complete" crap... it's unusable as written without major tweaks for anyone with a maturity level above 18 years, but certain elements are interesting, such as the Church of Bane, Red Wizards, Damara's political crisis from 1e... It's all the uber-lameness of the munchkinisms that kills FR, drowned in a sea of ridiculousness: Skullport, Undermountain, Waterdeep, Shades, Elminster, Beholders everywhere, godlike NPCs, Shadowdale, Time of Troubles, Cormyr, Harpers, too much treasure and magic items distributed like candy, Halruua, too many gods... I could go on and on. The fact that they keep changing things every few years instead of providing a stable environment drives me nuts too. In Harn, the year in official products is always 720... It never changes, so that what they publish won't ruin your campaign. From 720 on, the world is entirely your own to do anything you want with. No published material will ever contradict what you have done as DM. That is a welcome relief after being messed up by pinheads in FR with the Time of Troubles and other nonsense! There are no stupid novels that become "canon" even if you've never read them like with FR. I don't object to novels per se, but they should never be incorporated into the setting. I don't read them (Spellfire and Curse of the Azure Bonds were enough to turn me off forever to any TSR novel).

I do think the FR team dropped the ball with keeping FR a munchkin's paradise and the 3e team made a mistake by not including better world-building and historically accurate setting details in the DMG... From reading the DMG, one would have only the vaguest of notions of how a medieval world works. D&D 3e is too wrapped up in a video game "back to the dungeon" mentality to care, and everything they have released certainly points to this fact. *sigh*

Anyway, that's my anti-FR rant for the night.

Rounser? Victim? Green Knight?
you all gettin this?

 

[Numion]

Re: Re: High Fantasy = Low Intelligence?

Rounser? Victim? Green Knight?
you all gettin this?

Yeah, that was an excellent post! *cough*NOT*cough*

If some people got their heads out from where the sun don't shine for a moment, they'd realize that FR and GH aren't even that different. Though Kaptain doesn't realize it, the chances of finding a +1 sword are excactly the same both in FR and in GH!

Gazillions worth of equipment? They (FR npcs) have normal equipment according to the DMG equipment tables for their level.

Kaptains statement that treasure is handed out 'like candy' is also unfounded, because treasure is given out according to the treasure tables in DMG. Just like in Grayhawk.

So, no, not really, I ain't getting it. Kaptains post is full of mistakes. Please, although this is the 'net and all that, use some facts even if you're ranting.

 

[telepox]

Wether it's GH or FR, or straight up 3E rules for magic item progression, they all promote "stat munchkins" with the ease of availability. It's his belief and mine. That's a fact. You don't care about ours... etc. etc.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

I mentioned Greyhawk because it is "lower magic" than FR and the bigwig NPCs are generally of more reasonable levels with more reasonable equipment. It also has a richer history and more realistic feel to it than FR.

The ease of availability of magic in FR--indeed its very expectation--is what exacerbates munchkinism.

Those of us who complain about high fantasy/low intelligence munchkinism in FR and similar settings sound so elitist because we *are* the elite. We demand and expect more detail and realism from our games, not the same old tired mish-mash of hackneyed Tolkienesque rip-offs served up as tasteless gruel for the masses.

 

[telepox]

and a larger percentage of the NAMES and PLACES aren't blatantly taken from our world.

 

[Derulbaskul]

It's hard to follow up a wonderfully well-argued piece of analytical writing such as Kaptain_Kantrip's but I would mention that the natural development of a 20+ year old game world would be that there would be numerous high level NPCs. Why bag Ed Greenwood for doing two things most of us have not done and will probably never do:

1. run a campaign for over 20 years; and
2. sell said campaign world to TSR/WotC?

(quote)
More intelligent, researched and detailed settings like Harn, Greyhawk, Glorantha, etc., aren't as popular because they appeal to older, sophisticated gamers....
(unquote)

Hmmm, sophisticated gamers... what, are they ones who don't realise it's only a game?

K_K, have fun; it's only a game and it takes all types.

Enjoy.

Cheers
NPP

 

[Yuan-Ti]

We toned it down a lot and it worked just fine. The important thing about the realms is the places and history more then the magic. So, I was able to keep what I felt was the important parts of the Realms together and get the low magic setting I like.

YES!!! I have argued this for a long time. FR is an incredibly good setting, for the most part. The Sword Coast, for example, could keep a group happily busy for years of play. Years ago I started a group out on a campaign set there and we had a great time before people started moving away. But this was with the 1e campaign set -- the one where the most notable PC in some of the major towns was 7th level. The one where magic seemed not rarer but less intrusive. It worked very well to run it that way.

The new edition reflects the major powers that are active in the Realms, but could still easily be downmagicked. And those high level NPCs don't have to play a major role in your campaign. Though players familiar with the novels, BG, etc., might ask once in a while: "Hey, if this evil that is threatening the region is so great, why are WE dealing with it? Where the heck is Elminster?"

(This, of course, leads to the question: With all the magic item creation feats in D&D 3e, does it make sense to run a low magic campaign? Of course, you could always argue a PC Wizard has the very rare ability to create magic items.)