Let's Forget the Forgotten Realms

[gideonpepys]

Very strange coincidence, this: yesterday I was clearing out my spare room, and creating a shelf for all the old D&D stuff that I had in storage, when I came across the World of Greyhawk boxed set.

Flushed with nostalgia I started rabbiting on to my fiance about how excited I was to get this box back in 1983, and then I opened up the maps and pointed out all the evocative place names. And I wondered aloud why Wizards didn't stick with Greyhawk as their primary setting - which meant nothing to my fiance as she isn't a gamer.

Then I woke up this morning and read Morrus' almost verbatim account of my own D&D experience (except that I came to the game through Greyhawk, and got into Dragonlance when it came out). I feel exactly the same way as Morrus about this: Forgotten Realms means little or nothing to me (except I recognise some of the names from the Baldur's Gate series).

Could this spring from the fact that I skipped 2nd edition completely? (In those days I didn't have the money to spend replacing all my old books, so I carried on playing 1E before getting into other systems like Warhammer FRPG and - perhaps alone along my peers - Skyrealms of Jorune... anyone?)

The precise problem with the setting, for me, is that it is too full. Forgotten Realms is the setting that appeals to completists; the setting that appeals to folks who want blueprints of the SS Enterprise and know what grade Boba Fett got for his metalwork GCSE. You couldn't turn a corner in Waterdeep without tripping over a paragraph of canon. That's not what a setting should feel like, as far as I'm concerned. (Unless it's Ptolus, but we all have our little skeletons, don't we?)

It also has, in Elminster, a principal character so dull, his official minitaure is smoking a pipe and pointing out places of interest.

And Drizzt? I have the same reaction to his popularity as I have to the inexorable rise of the Spice Girls, Harry Potter, Keira Knightly and other phenomenon I caught before they achieved global domination and erroniously predicted for an early grave: horror.

Thing is, I expect crappy pop acts to gain inexplicable fame and fortune. But this hobby is supposed to be my sanctuary from populist tat.

Let me get this out of my system:

1) Drizzt is a stupid name. A stupid stupid name. It sounds like the noise a fly makes when it falls into the toilet.

2) Dual wielding large weapons isn't cool. At least not any more. Not now that it is a 'build' type, as opposed to something a specific individual might do once in a while. Sword and dagger? Okay - that makes sense. Two bastard swords? Not unless you've got forearms like Popeye. And two scimitars? Now you just look silly. Like a juggler in pantaloons and a fez.

3) Drizzt is responsible for making drow a playable race. That notion, along with the rehabilitation of minotaurs, is a pet peeve of mine. They should stay in the monster manual and be playable by DM caveat only. Honestly, there have been so many 'renegade drow' the Underdark must be empty. I once heard about a new game in which every player turned up and revealed their own carbon-copy Drizzt antihero. (A bit like the episode of South Park when Butters shows up in World of Warcraft with the same avatar as Cartman.)

Now, having got that out of the way, here is the one thing I'd like to suggest to wizards when it comes to settings:

Allow each setting to be unique. Allow Dark Sun to be free of dwarves and elves, and feature precious few of them in Planescape. Encourage your designers to create new places for players to explore that don't have any dragonborn, or tieflings. I really don't see that it is necessary for every setting to be the same or have the same flavour as the 'core' (whatever they decide that to be). This was the design decision that limited the usefulness of the 4E settings.

But I'm glad they did in a way - because that led me to use compelling 3rd party environments (first Arcana Evolved, Ptolus and now Zeitgeist) which Wizards - with their 'all things to all people' ethos - fail to produce so spectacularly.

The by-word for naff at our gaming table is 'Wizard's fluff', which sounds like a sexual euphemism, but we all know what it means: The kind of copy that some poor 'designer' has to bash out to fill a page on some aspect of a campaign world, or some corner-case paragon path, or some new race he has no investment in.

And the strangest corollary of this is that, instead of inventing, say, wilden, for one specific setting, all of a sudden, when they show up in a PHB, they are suddenly a feature of every setting Wizards has produced - along with revenants, warforged, vryloka, shades, hamadryad, etc, all of which belong in specific setting (or in no setting at all in the case of wilden).

 

[Dire Bare]

I think Morrus' OP was a bit flippantly dismissive of the Realms as a setting (and, by extension, its hardcore fans), and the Realms isn't truly better or worse a "generic" setting than any other, including Greyhawk and Dragonlance . . . barring individual tastes of course. Kind of an unnecessary FR bashing just to get to the thesis that Greyhawk should be the default setting, which I actually agree with. A lot of us take our D&D settings quite seriously, as anyone who spends even a small amount of time on these boards already knows.

But, Morrus is right in the end, that Greyhawk should be the default setting of D&D Next. Go back to what 3E tried with the setting in 2000 (my god, has it been over a decade!?!) but without the later setting dilution 3E went through after the 3.5 launch. I wouldn't mind if WotC rebooted the setting back to "start" and maybe even redesigned parts of it (a la "New Trek") . . . but Greyhawk in the core books should be "Greyhawk Lite", just as it was at the beginning of 3E. More detailed support could always come in the magazines.

Of course, we don't know what WotC is planning for the default setting of 5E, nothing announced yet truly suggests it will be FR. FR is a popular setting due to the video games, novels, and yes, Drizzt, and deserves to receive full support, just not as the default setting. If you don't like it, don't buy it! But please, no more rebooting, despite the fact it's an FR tradition come edition change. Keep the current post-Spellplague setting and keep moving forward.

I would love to see a small run of quality Dragonlance books for the next edition, but a full line would be too much. Sorry, but Dragonlance really is a (almost) one-trick pony (although a great ride) . . . just like Star Wars, later Dragonlance products try too hard to recapture the magic rather than truly expand the setting beyond the Companions of the Lance.

Other settings have their fans, including myself, but I don't see print support as realistic for any of them. But I would very much like to see support in the magazines for all of the classic settings. Maybe even mini "Player's Handbooks" for each setting detailing specific races, classes, etc, etc . . .

Most importantly, regardless of what becomes the default setting and how much print/online support other settings get . . . WotC should not be afraid to introduce new material that doesn't fit into any existing setting. Give us some DDI articles about new gods, organizations, cities, etc without worry about fitting them into the core, FR, or anything else. There should be not "setting" limits on new material . . . mostly for DDI of course, in print would be different.

 

[Celtavian]

No matter what setting they do, it will be like Forgotten Realms. Even Paizo's Golarion is in many ways like Forgotten Realms without the larger than life characters, which most Forgotten Realms gamers never much used.

Settings like the Forgotten Realms provide the largest tapestry for DMs and adventure writers to work with while keeping a cohesive world. You want to play a dwarf? Elf? Halfling? Gnome? You can do it. Want to play a scimitar wielding desert dervish? A plate clad knight? A robed, bearded, sarcastic, cranky wizard? A greataxe wielding half-orc barbarian? You can do it. Want to set an adventure in old jungle ruins? Abandoned pyramids in the desert? A feudal monarchy fighting against a treacherous king? An ancient vampire ruling over a land of mist? You can do it.

It is the saccharine, versatile nature of the Forgotten Realms setting that makes it so attractive. And it is all blended with a reasonable amount of verisimilitude to make it all work. But WotC could rename it and start a different versatile, saccharine setting if you want. It would end up being similar. But I imagine from a profitability standpoint, they want to keep their literary properties going, mainly Driz'zt. I'm sure they still make money off the dark elf ranger that could not really exist and be as effective as he is with any set of D&D rules.

I don't much care if they go Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc, etc. It will most likely end up being a world much like our own as far as cultures go with all the standard tropes of fantasy worked in as well to appeal to the largest number of gamers while still allowing them all to exist in the same world.

 

[Wycen]

Morrus is a good guy.

 

[btmcrae]

4E was a radical departure away form the game's roots. Getting back closer to them would be a very good idea, and that is just with regard to how the game itself works. As to campaign settings, the Forgotten Realms, which I am familiar with, has simply had a ton of material written for it, so much so that the only way they could think of doing anything with it last time around was to annihilate it and build it back up, hoping that everyone who liked the setting would very much enjoy their wanton destruction and re-imagining of it. I am thinking that the response was not exactly what WotC had hoped for.

Anyways, the bad taste of Forgotten Realms 4E is very much still lingering(it is almost as bad as people complaining about how there is no Greyhawk ), such that it might be just the right time to compliment it with an old, well-liked taste. Now, I am a bit biased, seeing as Greyhawk is my favorite campaign setting of them all, but there are many things that Greyhawk has going for it.

One, it has not been done to death, meaning it is ripe for a variety of products, namely in-depth books on the campaign setting's regions. For Forgotten Realms regional info, we're talking the third iteration of most of this stuff, and that would involve a ton of rehashed material. If one went about it with half a brain, most of the Greyhawk stuff would be NEW, as it is would be based on what bits of extant information that there are, which really is not that much. Even the regional Greyhawk source books that were published are chock full of gaping information holes, much of it very relevant to basic adventuring in those areas. Iuz the Evil, The Marklands, and Ivid the Undying tried to cover too much, and ultimately did a half-arsed job on many of the areas they cover.

Two, alongside the core setting and regional books, how about releasing some adventures in support of those regions? Linked product support? Stuff that is meant to go together by design? While modules/adventures don't have the profit margin that big books do, you need them. Why? Because you'll never hear somebody say "Remember that paragraph in that core rule book? That was AWESOME!" What you will hear is "Remember that adventure where your wizard shapechanged into a giant and chucked that drow priestess, who was wrecking us with her spells, into that lava-filled crevasse? That was AWESOME!!!"(gee, I wonder which adventure that could have happened in? ). WotC needs to support the setting with lots of modules/adventures full of setting-specific awesomeness. And no, that doesn't mean that everything takes place in the City of Greyhawk, or that Zagyg or some other iconic personality makes an appearance in every other adventure(Greyhawk isn't the Forgotten Realms). It just means to make use of the background, and work a few things into the modules/adventures in a not so "In your FACE!!!" sort of way.

Three, ya know, it kind of is good to have those Greyhawk(and other)personality's names attached to their spells/magic items. Rather than remove the names, it would be far better to add the caveat, "While this spell/item was originally created by X of the World of Greyhawk, a similar spell/item exists in most other campaign worlds where it is know by the name X." That's a nod to ALL of your campaign settings in the Core books at least. I know this is the "Greyhawk is the AWSOMEST" thread, but acknowledging ALL settings in the Core books, in even an off-handed way, would be a heck of good idea! This is a part of the game's HERITAGE- make use of it, not cast it out! Whoever thought that something bland and featureless would be oh so much better than something vibrant that just so happens to also point to even more of your products needs to have their head examined. Next in line for examination would be the product manager who gave such an idea the thumb's up.

I am all for WotC doing well, but I would prefer that they make products that I actually want to buy, and that overall respects the history of the campaign setting and enriches it. They'll probably just go with Forgotten Realms: The "We're Sorry We Screwed It Up Last Time" Edition instead. One can hope they are more open-minded than that though.

Then there is the whole anniversary thing, which is the perfect opportunity to inject some the the old and awesome into the new. Seldom is that ever a bad idea. This is a golden opportunity for WotC to tap into the total market, meaning also tap into the veterans out there that grew up on the game. They ought to know that we are no longer the kids screaming 'But I want an oompa loompa now, Daddy!", but that we are now the people who have the discretionary income to buy all the' oompa loompas that we want to, and when we want to! And we are probably going to be more open to buying the oompas loompas that we know and love for our kids than the ones that we don't. It's that whole "shared memories with your kids" thing. it is kind nice to be able to relate with your kids about something you both know and love.

Yes, I know. As odd as it sounds, against societal odds, those first and second generations of gamers actually found a way to breed(they are a tenacious bunch; and also actually know what "tenacious" even means ), and there are many, many times the number of offspring now that there were gamers then, and those older gamer parents are very much open to the idea of letting their kids play fantasy RPGs, unlike the whole slew of foolishness that those early players had to deal with in the early 1980's. Rather than newspaper headlines like "Mind Flayer Tells Kid to Butcher Schoolmates With Katana", we now have positive headlines like "Players Roll the Dice for Dungeons & Dragons Remake" ans uch in newspapers like Forbes and the NY Times no less. The environment is about as friendly right now as it has ever been(not that the console/computer gaming industry hasn't helped out in that regard).

So, bring back Greyhawk. It would be a good time to do so, for a variety of reasons. I guess that is enough blathering for now.

 

[Incenjucar]

Seeing a title like "Iuz the Evil" brings up the issue of how extremely dated some of the material feels. Obviously, existing fans of the settings will eat that up, but I don't get the impression that current up-and-coming fantasy enthusiasts are going to be impressed with references that sound like the common parodies of the game. Some may not feel playing in a game that sounds like it was inspired by Adventure Time (though it was the other way around) is something they can take seriously enough to get deeper into. And if that makes me sound pompous, note that I happily opened my current campaign with vampire mermaids. But I was playing with people who were already interested in the game.

 

[Oni]

Morrus, if you know so little about it as you say you do I'm not certain how you can render your verdict of it being a boring setting such as you have done. Rather than form an opinion from second hand talk and a couple crummy novels, why not actually sit down with a setting book and inform yourself. If you would rather Dragonlance or Greyhawk be the flagship setting for D&D based on what you personally see as their positive attributes that's absolutely reasonable, but to base that argument on attacking a setting you self-admittedly know little to nothing about seems a wrong-headed approach.

From my own personal experience I can say there has never been a campaign setting book that made me desire to sit down and play more than the 3e FRCS. And while there are people that might (at times) rightly say that it is overly generic or too much of a kitchen sink, I've never seen another campaign setting that instills such a sense of adventure. Personally I don't believe there can be any recommendation higher for a potential D&D flagship setting than it be able to make people actually want to play the game. So instead of being so dismissive of the Realms I would urge you to actually acquaint yourself with the 3e FRCS or the old grey box and experience what actually makes it great, firsthand.

 

[jbear]

Allow each setting to be unique. Allow Dark Sun to be free of dwarves and elves

Err ... DarkSun without Dwarves? One thing that makes DarkSun unique is the Mul which is a breed between dwarves and humans. Its an integral feature of the setting. In fact it is one of the few things I can remember about one of the original Dark Sun novels I read as a kid: Endless Desert, Thri-kreens, abolition of magic, slaves, gladiators and Muls.

I'm pretty sure elves are an integral part of the original setting as well though they are a kind of savage gypsy culture known to be very untrustworthy.

Is this what you are meaning perhaps? They should (not even originally when Dark Sun was first created) not have included elves and dwarves, even if their natures are radically different from the 'normal fantasy elf'? They should have just created another race entirely? Or are you mistakenly thinking that 4e rethought elves in Dark Sun, and pushed them into the setting because anything goes?

 

[Steel_Wind]

I never played in the Forgotten Realms -- and I never ran it, either.

But somewhere along the way, I got involved in writing an official D&D computer game for BioWare's Neverwinter Nights. As a consequence of that contract, I had to immerse myself in the hefty lore of the Forgotten Realms in order to create something "official" for it that worked completely with the FR canon.

As it turned out, I ended up creating an "official dragon" for the Forgotten Realms that made its way into a 3.5 hardcover-- my one little contribution to the whole of it. (Which, on balance, was actually pretty damned cool.) But more importantly than that, in doing my extensive background research on the FR for that NWN game, I came to appreciate the sheer diversity and usefulness of a Kitchen-Sink setting like the Realms from a commercial design and marketing perspective.

For a whole host of reasons from a game design perspective, a Kitchen-Sink setting makes the most "commercial sense" if one has to design a commercial game world. Paizo did exactly the same thing with Golarion. And I understand completely why Paizo chose Golarion to be the way it is and have designed it in that fashion. As a shared commercial world -- it fits their needs brilliantly. I get it.

Altering the FR in the manner that 4E did was unwise and has not been successful for WotC. I was neither a fan of the FR, nor of 4E, but I GOT the reason why there were people who were attached to this setting and felt that it had been abused by the changes forced upon it. While that didn't kill any sacred cow that I had made a real emotional investment in -- I still understood that many gamers had. So I empathized with their injured feelings. I get it.

For some people, I can see how Greyhawk is important to them. I played in it with 1st ed -- have run games set in it, too -- so I can see why that is important to some people and why they would like to see that restored as "the default setting". As between the FR and Greyhawk, I'm not terribly drawn to one or the other -- but I understand why many fans are. I empathize with their attachment to Greyhawk. I get it.

As for DragonLance and Krynn, I loved it for a time and I became heavily invested in it. (My Avatar is a one-of-a-kind hand-drawn sketch of Lord Soth by an artist at Marvel.) Still, I think that like all things from our youth -- we can't revisit them in that fashion again, no matter how much we wish we could. TSR went to the DraonLance well a few times too many, and after WotC licensed it to Margaret Weiss and her company in 2005, we had a chance to go there again for 3.5. Turns out, it didn't set the gaming world on fire then -- and I don't see it happening in 5E either.

What I DO Believe In

I personally believe that if any setting is going to come along and have a huge impact on the gaming world, it will be something LIKE DragonLance. And by "like it", I don't mean similar to Krynn in any real or connected sense of the term -- simply that it will be a setting created for the very purpose of being the location of an Adventure Path intended to be set within it. That Adventure Path should be cross-supported by decent novels which hits the right buttons in the marketplace at the time it is released.

And yes, inevitably, then they'll probably have to genericize the setting after that AP story is over; it will be become bland and watered down and wrecked. But up to that point? It's all good!

That's how DragonLance did when it "saved" TSR from its financial woes in the initial post-Gygax era. If WotC wants that lightning to strike again, seems to me that they need to give it a chance of doing so.

But in the meanwhile, there needs to be some sort of kitchen-sink setting that makes commercial sense. One of the biggest factors in it being able to MAKE commercial sense is if it is popular and engenders emotional attachment to the largest swath of players.

And yes, that means the Forgotten Realms for 5E. So that makes sense to me. I get it.

The shame of it is, I have seen no evidence == ZERO evidence == that WotC is interested in telling an "official epic story" of any kind using the Dungeons and Dragons rules. WotC is instead interested in letting gamers make up their own stories with their rules. Not a bad philosophy to be sure, but it isn't a mutually exclusive approach from the DragonLance AP concept, either. There is room and money for both.

That said, the fact that WotC has never attempted to do this with any serious product initiative in the past nearly 15 years suggests to me that I should not hold my breath.

 

[Dire Bare]

In Defense of the Realms, and Drizzt

Folks trashing the Realms has become tired, beyond tired. It's the edition wars shifted over to the campaign settings, and it's just as ridiculous. So, you prefer Greyhawk (or Dragonlance, or Eberron, or whatever) over the Realms. That's nice, and if you're civil about expressing it, I wouldn't mind discussing settings on the forums with you. But when folks whip out the childish hyperbole of "Drizzt Sucks!" (or El, or the Spellplague, or whatever), I just turn off and stop caring about your opinions.

Morrus might have been a bit too flippant towards the Realms for my tastes in the OP, but my little reverse rant isn't aimed at him, but more towards some later posts that "agree" with the OP, and then take things predictably too far.

I like the Realms, and I'm not a huge fan of the Greyhawk setting. But I won't trash it, because, well, I'm kinda a polite guy (and there is a lot to like in GH, even if the overall setting doesn't do it for me). What do I like about the Realms? It certainly is a "generic" setting that is very "full" with detail and has some pretty amazingly high powered NPCs. As a gaming setting, the Realms has always appealed to me as a "generic" (hate the term, but can't think of a better one) setting that embodies everything D&D, and then adds new stuff that is easily portable to other "generic" campaigns, homebrew or published. It's D&D+ to me! Plus, some of the stories told in the realms in video games, novels, and comics have been EXCELLENT and are a valued part of my library that I return to again and again.

Finally, I'll part with a defense of Elminster and Drizzt. First, El is most certainly insanely overpowered and, for a time, was overused in the rpg books and fiction. But El fell prey to the "Klingon Effect" (IMO). He was originally created as the Gandalf figure who was supposed to be in the background as a plot device to provide hooks for adventurers . . . but due to a combination of his popularity as a character and his author's enjoyment of writing him, he took center stage for a while in the 2nd Edition days. But even then, it was easy-peasy to put El "back in his place" when running games, as most FR DMs did. In 3E and 4E, despite the ongoing novel series about him, El was once again relegated to the background so the PCs were in the spotlight again. Over a decade ago.

Drizzt is even easier to defend (and also is a "victim" of the Klingon Effect). He is a great character! If you don't care for Salvatore's writing style, and/or the character himself, that's fine. But Drizzt is popular for a reason, and it isn't because his skin is jet black and he's a kewl dark elf. It's because he's well written. He is the constant loner whom no one understands (except perhaps his small circle of hard-won friends), which resonates with a lot of folks. And, in regards to the name thing, D&D settings in general are riddled with "stupid" names, so folks mocking the extra zzz's are being willfully ignorant as it's pretty easy to pick any D&D setting and come up with a good list of "stupid" names.

Ultimately, folks mock the Drizzt character, and the Realms as a whole, because they are popular settings. There is this sick element of American culture, or perhaps human nature, that loves to tear down what others enjoy. It's not unique to gaming of course, but here we are on ENWorld.

If you don't care for it, that's fine. Express it, even. But please, try and cut back on the insults and hyperbole, it just makes you look mean-spirited.