The New Forgotten Realms - (About) A Year Later

[Atras]

I don't run or play FR largely because there's too much damned history to keep straight

I would never have been able to get into the Realms if not for the semi-reboot for the same reasons. Honestly, my biggest problem with the Spellplague is that not enough time has gone by - Dwarves and Elves will likely have first hand knowledge of what happened, and the players have to make something up to fill in that gap.

 

[Primal]

In the 2E days the huge amount of source material was immersing, altho toward the end of 2E, with Volo's endless series of guides (I mean, how did we not have Outhouses of Waterdeep by the end?) and other books detailing the setting to such minute levels, we had so much material it was getting overwhelming and hard to find an area of the world you could set things in and not have some super-pedantic player hard endlessly about how "that whole area has had blah blah" and "Didn't you read X book last month? The king is dead, how could he be giving us all orders!?". Yes the easy answer w/those people is to say that what hapens in the novels doesn't happen in your games, but it's still irritating.

No, I think that was the *wellhouses* and wells of Waterdeep, and it was Ed Greenwood's reply to my question on Candlekeep (or maybe you thought about his "generic" reply to outhouses and what people in the Realms use for toilet paper?). If this wasn't what you referred to, I'm not kidding here; those are actual questions answered by Ed.

In all seriousness, my players love this sort of details, and sometimes they catch me by surprise when they ask about, say, local architecture or holidays or fashion or famous personalities and so on (sometimes it's out of curiosity, sometimes there's a mechanical or story reason such as the rogue's player wanting to know which sort of drainpipes are used in the city buildings and what material are they made of).

Anyway, regardless of the fact that I'm playing with pedantic and curious people, we all know that not everything needs to be "ultra-realistic" or 100% according to the canon. When I sit at another FR DM's game, I'm not upset if his campaign features, for example, Azoun IV's twin sons (as we know, he had no living sons). Or Bane never returned, and his son Iyachtu Xvim is still the God of Tyranny. Or Neverwinter's lord was killed by the Kraken Society, and now his step-daughter rules the city. And so on. As long as these changes to the canon are plausible and explained, I don't care; in many cases stuff like this has actually made the campaign more interesting and the world feel more "alive".

 

[Keefe the Thief]

As long as these changes to the canon are plausible and explained, I don't care

And here we have the problem in a nutshell, which is repeated in gaming groups and on the internet: "If you change details of FR go on! As long as those changes make sense for me as a lore-lover, of course." THIS is the root of the "lore tyranny" discussion: "I don´t mind your changes as long as i like them."

Plausible? A FR DM should be free to change what he likes how he likes it. But - no offense meant, Primal - i´ve encountered this opinion before, both on the internet and in real life. "You´re free to change stuff, but not THIS stuff, because me, the lore-guy, says this makes no sense. And i´m not going to tell you what THIS stuff is before you actually change it, because for a TRUE lover of the realms, it should be obvious!"

No thanks. This was the real reason why i started my Grey Box Campaign: nobody in my group has a clue about that timeline, so nobody can tell me that my changes were "not plausible."

 

[Derulbaskul]

I still believe that the new FR would have had a much more positive reception if the map hadn't been one of the worst maps ever published in the history of RPG publishing. The problem with my previous sentence is that I don't think I'm exaggerating!

One of the strengths of FR since the first, and now legendary, grey box was the quality of the maps. But the latest map? Crap with a capital K.

Look at the Eberron maps: they're arguably an improvement on the 3.5E ones and certainly no worse.

For FR only one map was done so even the regional close ups in both the FRCG and FRPG include no additional features that a close-up would normally show, not even the features described in a region's write-up!

So, as much as I know that there is bad blood about the content and direction of the post-Spellplague Realms, a lot of that ill-feeling, IMO, could have been prevented if WotC had put together some really good maps.

As for the setting itself, I like it and use it. Why? Simply because I like WotC's electronic tools so much so I just can't be bothered recreating the 3.5E flavour of the races, in particular, because I can't custom-build them in the Character Generator yet. That said, as soon as I can, I wouldn't be surprised if I go back to the pre-Spellplague Realms but I also may not.

 

[SSquirrel]

No, I think that was the *wellhouses* and wells of Waterdeep, and it was Ed Greenwood's reply to my question on Candlekeep (or maybe you thought about his "generic" reply to outhouses and what people in the Realms use for toilet paper?). If this wasn't what you referred to, I'm not kidding here; those are actual questions answered by Ed.

Nope don't read Candlekeep and I'm not surprised in the least that people ask that sort of thing. I just meant that it seemed there was a Volo's guide to freaking everything and other FR products got to the point where someone could say "Oh no, 3 streets over, 2 blocks up is a bookshop" while running around Waterdeep. This is either great for the immersiveness of it all or irritating when the DM wants to not get dragged in there. "There's no bookshop over there" "Yes there is, page 47 of blah blah" "He's on vacation" is an argument you shouldn't have to have several times a night.

In all seriousness, my players love this sort of details, and sometimes they catch me by surprise when they ask about, say, local architecture or holidays or fashion or famous personalities and so on (sometimes it's out of curiosity, sometimes there's a mechanical or story reason such as the rogue's player wanting to know which sort of drainpipes are used in the city buildings and what material are they made of).

For me there is a difference in knowing local holidays, what style of architecture things are, who some of the famous locals are and having a storefront by storefront listing of half the city, which the old FR certainly felt like at times. Ptolus was a product that had a distinct mix of this. Monte had things like a sample menu for one of the restaurants, citizenship papers, gun permits, and he did detail many of the locations in the various areas. There were also many left open and the point of the product was specifically a single city that was highly detailed. It is a delicate balance. Enough detail to make it feel lived in and enough blank space for the DM to play with.

 

[Hussar]

Well, you can see where WOTC is really pushing "core" material.

Take for example the Hammerfast product. A generic dwarven outpost/town (and I think I wouldn't be surprised if there's one for elves coming out as well).

Such a product would've fallen under a campaign setting moniker before most likely. It seems like WOTC is betting they'll get more sales with such a "generic" town than one with specific ties to a campaign setting.

They might actually be right...

I remember seeing more than a couple of editorial letters in Dragon and Dungeon talking about exactly this. A generic module sells far and away better than a campaign specific one, simply because there are people who don't play that given setting who will not even open the cover, let alone buy the product to mine for information all on the idea that this is for a "specific" campaign world.

 

[williamhm]

I dont see how people adventured in 3.5 FR. There were way too many npcs to make it worth it. Every last detail of the world was known. There was literally nothing for the dm or group to do at all. At least thats the way I felt about it. The 3.5 campaign guide spelled everything out there was no mystery in it. No unknown villian. There was really nothing interesting in old forgotten realms.

 

[SSquirrel]

The generic area things they added into the 4E FR book are really the worst part of the entire book. I like that for the core adventure series they would post free articles talking about how you would fit this area into X campaign world. Helps you take the more generic adventure and find a very appropriate place for it within other settings.

You have to hand it to WotC, they do understand that the generic will sell better than the campaign specific. That info on how to fit it into your existing campaign world could also be included in the adventure, but it is something that fits well as a web enhancement too. It will be very interesting to see how they will suggest runnig some of those adventures in Dark Sun tho heh.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Anyone want to explain the Spell-Plague to a non-4e guy?
The way it reads from this thread it's akin to the Cataclysm within Dragonlance, only it's a present times calmity between 3.5E and 4E vice a past tense happening at the start of Dragonlance.

 

[EATherrian]

I would play in the 4E Realms, but the CG just doesn't give me any real inspiration for the DM side. As a player I'm open to any and all settings, but so much of the Realms seemed ham-fisted that I just don't enjoy reading the book. I know I'm strange in that I like to actually read gaming books, but I'm always looking for details and little things I can use. I can see how Abeir could be interesting but there wasn't enough information for me to figure out how to flesh it. I love when I have historical guides to settings, since it lets me extrapolate where the setting will go and how. Without that for Abeir it's like an open sore in the world to me. Plus my favorite FR region (Mulhorand) is gone. I was actually all excited to join the RPGA until I heard it was going to be LFR. I still kick myself for not doing it while Living Greyhawk was running, but I didn't realize it was a limited time thing.