D&D 5E How do you feel about the Forgotten Realms?

[Daggerswan]

I'm a busy person and I don't want to have to come up with a bunch of details about the campaign world. My preference is to concentrate on the factors local to the PCs/adventure. But if I need to plop a scenario on the map I can because it is not THAT detailed. I mean, how hard is it to place a hollow in some mountain range of your choice and base the adventure from there? And all the high level NPCs? I played in FR almost exclusively through all of 2nd Edition and never met one. I voted neutral initially, but now that I have heard all these arguments, I'm thinking FR is actually good thing. And if I am not articulating the reasons well enough, well, that does not change whether I like the realms or not.

 

[Mirtek]

Actually a slim majority (not even a plurality, but an actual majority) say they are neutral.

Actually not. 17+30>31

I think it is folly to ignore that elephant in the room.

Even if they were? Why would it be folly to ignore them? You could lump them together with the actual dislikers to say that 53% do not like it. But so what? More people in the world dislike McRib than like it. So what?

 

[sgtscott658]

This is obviously a general DnD forum, so you will get all kinds of opinions on what people here like or dislike about the realms but if you go to Candlekeep forums, you will find that 100's of people like the Realms. It is after a fan site where as this forum is not and thus you will find a mixture of opinions here vs there.

As an aside, did anyone else notice on the Hoard of the Dragon Queen map for the Sword Coast, they have the wrong spelling for Silverymoon? Also, The Glimmerwood should be the Moonwood near Silverymoon, right? Of course I am going off my old 3.5 FR stuff, so things might have changed.


Scott

Actually not. 17+30>31
Even if they were? Why would it be folly to ignore them? You could lump them together with the actual dislikers to say that 53% do not like it. But so what? More people in the world dislike McRib than like it. So what?

 

[Maggan]

I love Forgotten Realms as a world for the CRPGs.

I am down on it as a world for tabletop D&D with my friends. Too detailed and no hook for me.

So I love it and really don't care for it at the same time.

/M

 

[Joe Liker]

Actually not. 17+30>31

Never mind. An odd display issue was mashing things together for me and making it look like something it wasn't.

 

[Sammael]

I love it and it is my setting of choice for campaigns (next to Planescape, but Planescape also requires players with a specific mindset, which is not the case with FR).

Why do I love it? Because it's detailed. So detailed, in fact, that I can pick a map of Faerun, choose a single point, and in 99 out of 100 cases I can find material on that point. Will I always use this material? Hell no, it's my game. But I love having at the very least the starting parameters which I can then modify to my liking.

Famous "good" NPCs don't bother me in the least. They are there, they just rarely interact with the PCs and when they do, it's rarely detrimental. They may offer plot hooks, or sage advice, or try to further their agendas, but they don't run the show.

On the other hand, for every famous "good" NPC, there are three "evil" ones. Plenty of BBEGs to choose from, and since they are not a monolithic force it is quite possible for the players to cooperate with them (if they are so inclined).

The kitchen sink aspect of the setting also allows for all sort of player customization extravaganzas, and I can add pretty much anything from any source material I find interesting and it will fit somewhere in the world without any issues.

FR also connects seamlessly to Planescape, which is a huge bonus.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Thank you all for your answers, I think I understand your point of view, or at least I understand it better.

• 3e FRCS - one of the best campaign setting books. In the gazetter section, each area/country has a short list of what is going on. It immediately brought out tons of adventure ideas. One could quickly get a feel of what issues impacted the region, and this brought the setting to life for me.
• Its a great polished homebrew. Many people do what FR does - fantasy up real world places and put them together. Its familiar yet unexplored
• Lots of organizations. As a GM, I can decide which ones come into play or if I want to make my own that fits somewhere in between the existing.
• If I have an idea, it fits in FR. If I want to have a vampiric were-badger gnome as an enemy, it first right in (that guy is actually in the Shining South book).
• It scratches the Epic/High Fantasy itch
• Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. They show you how you can pull FR together into something Epic.
• The Gods are a mix for me. But one thing a GM or player can always do is grab an obscure one and do something interesting with it. In a short run, I once justified having an assassin in the party using the minor god Hoar (I think it was). My PC brought vengeance for wrongs that ordinary people had no chance of righting.
• Its frickin huge. You could run 20 campaign in completely different places - no two campaigns need to "feel" the same.

About that last point: one of the things that I've never liked about the Realms is that it does feel the same, to some extant. Wherever you go on the map, you've got the same little kingdoms surrounded by orc raiders, evil wizards and elvish ruins (or at least, that's what I've always felt)... There's nothing there that makes me say, "well, that's different" like, say, Aerenal in Eberron or Glantri in Mystara. Am I wrong? Is there more diversity in Faerun than I think?

I like FR because of individual characters, settings, and storylines. Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Never winter. The Crystal Shard or the Twilight War. Farideh or Minsc. The setting has attracted some talented creators over the years.

I liked some of the old FR CRPG like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, and I've played a couple of campaigns in Faerun, but for the life of me I can't remember anything that stands out about Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter - they were just completely generic fantasy cities (or at least that's the impression that they left me)... Is there really something distinctive about them or do you like them because they feel familiar (and there's nothing wrong with that: I like them because they feel familiar.)

You don't need to have specific reasons to like something. You just have to enjoy it. It's an emotional thing.

I believe that everything can be conveyed through language, including emotions. Some people are more inclined to do it than others, that's true, but there's no harm in asking.

Not really. Satisfied people are always less likely to voice their opinion than dissatisfied people.

Actually, I made that point myself in this thread.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm neutral on the whole in that there are things I would always take and things I would always leave.

Pros - It's a great place to make a character the sheer array of options is impressive and it's replete with convenient explanations for why X from Y would be adventuring with Z.

And I really like some of the micro-settings that make it so great for CRPGs.

Also, Zahkara from Al-Quadim is amazing, and while it could be anywhere, FR is where it is.

Cons -
Realms-Lawyers: Actually played with a guy, a great great guy, who said he did not see the point of playing in anything that wasn't Realms or Tolkien-esque. Why would you not want to be Elminster or Artemis or any of the greats? Why settle for something lesser?
Coherence: It isn't generic, but it FEELS that way because plot tends to run roffshod over place even in the parts where the place really matters or works well. Take Neverwinter, is there any way it will ever be allowed to have its own story versus being a point in the story of the protagonist of a novel, CRPG, or even TTRPG?

There are levels where that's obviously ok, but as DM that makes it far less interesting to me because it compromises my role in the ensemble and gives me less to be invested in given the amount of background work I'm going to be doing for the PCs.

 

[The_Gneech]

I like it as a source of ideas, maps, neat images etc., but I would never run it straight as written. Too much noise! This is a world where everything is huge and epic and exploding and levitating and glowing and zapping and conquering. This is not a world people actually live in.

My current 5E campaign is in a homebrew that on the surface is very similar: I took the regional map in the Starter Set, changed a bunch of names, and shuffled things around, editing out tieflings everywhere and floating islands and more sinister conspiracies than there are people to be conspired against. In the words of the immortal Egg Chen, "We take what we want and leave the rest– like your salad bar!"

-The Gneech

 

[steeldragons]

I voted "Neutral" since that's the only "don't care" option there is. Assuming I'm not the only one, the "take it or leave it" result is likely skewed by this when the reality of my [and presumably other's] answer/opinion is precisely this...

I am neutral. Not "take it or leave it", because I see no reason to take it. It is largely irrelevant to my gaming.

I hope they publish something good about it, because I am all for folks getting stuff they like.