Why the hatred towards FRCS?

[Holy Bovine]

E) Too many cooks. FR has some really good elements. Problem is that it has too many elements, all thrown in the pot just so it can own that characteristic. Planescape and Greyhawk in particular are heavily borrowed from. FR is a Morass that have glommed on to every bit that they could throw into the pot and as a result, it has no true distinctiveness of its own.

Gotta agree with anyone who uses the term 'glommed on'

FR is ok as far as it goes and the new 3E book is oh so tempting but I would sooner pick and choose what parts i would allow and there are entire sections of the Realms I would just have marked 'unknown'.

Does every starting adventure get an atlas with his sword?

 

[kenjib]

1)
Too high magic and power levels for my personal taste. It wasn't like this when it was first released.

2)
It's tired and worn thin. The first release of the old gray boxed set was fantastic but now it's just been around too long and has too much junk. I looked at the new edition and the art and production value were calling my name, but when I read a few entries I just remembered how old and worn out it all is so it went back on the shelf.

What I liked about the first release was that, unlike Greyhawk, it was filled with wild and empty spaces. Well, they are all just about filled up now...

 

[AFGNCAAP]

First, I do want to say that I;m much more of a Lankhmar fan than a Relams fan---prefer a low-magic setting & a bit more nitty-gritty than epic settings like the Realms or Krynn.

For the most part, I have to agree with Neowolf & Psion---it suffers from too many cooks (unavoidable with the sheer number of novels based in the Realms), & it is a bit too well defined.

It's this excess of detail which, IMHO, acts as a double-edged sword; it grants an immense amount of detail to work with, yet it's a mountain of reading in its own right. The works created for the setting can generate interest, but it can also bring about excessive attention to continuity & detail from the staunchest of fans.

I find the same problem to be true with other popular settings, such as Marvel, DC, Star Trek, Star Wars, Dragonlance, even Lord of the Rings, all of which have/had/will have RPGs based on them. I think that this problem is worse with ongoing sources such as comic books.

I don't like the high-powered epic feel of the setting; the gods are too involved in mortal affairs, & the Gandalf-like character of Elminster (even more so with his role as a sword-wielding Chosen of Mystra, much like the sword-wielding Maiar that is Gandalfl and, there is additional Chosen of Mystra as there are addtional Istari, such as Saruman and Radagast)---the personalities are different, but they are cast from similar molds.

And, as a final note, I dislike the use of an entire Egyptian pantheon in the Realms---it's been done before (Palladium Fantasy is a good example of this). I think I would accept it a bit more if it were more piecemeal, like a lot of the borrowed gods in FR---the Norse Tyr, Finnish Mielikki & Loviatar, Celtic Oghma, Roman Silvanus (listed as Celtic in the old 1st Ed. Deities & Demigods), etc. I don't mind this being done in homebrew campaigns, but it does bother me when it's done in published settings---if the deities are going to be invented, then go all the way instead of halfway.

I liked the Realms back in the old. 1st. Ed grey box days, when Drizzt only appeared in the Icewind Dale Trilogy, & I anticipated playing the original Pool of Radiance module. However, since the Time of Troubles, the Realms have lost its appeal for me.

Oh well, just MHO.

 

[hellbender]

1)
Too high magic and power levels for my personal taste. It wasn't like this when it was first released.

2)
It's tired and worn thin. The first release of the old gray boxed set was fantastic but now it's just been around too long and has too much junk. I looked at the new edition and the art and production value were calling my name, but when I read a few entries I just remembered how old and worn out it all is so it went back on the shelf.

What I liked about the first release was that, unlike Greyhawk, it was filled with wild and empty spaces. Well, they are all just about filled up now...

Kenjib nailed my reasons for steering away from the Forgotten Realms on the head. I remember waaaaaaaaaaay back, when FR came out in bits and pieces in Dragon magazine, when the 'Realms were much more feral and untamed, but now, it seems as if everything has been done before. Just my impressions, and I don't hate the setting by any means, it just does nothing for me.

hellbender

 

[applenerd]

I guess I don't have anything all that new to add but basically I'll just echo the fact that it seems like the players are insignificant when compared to the events and NPC's that surround them. When I play (or dm) I want to feel that my character (or my players) is going to make a difference. It's not that this wouldn't happen while playing FR but it's just a feeling I have about it. It's easy to be caught in the shadow of giants like Elminster or Drizzt. I used to do my own homebrew campaign but my most recent campaign has been in Greyhawk because of time constraints.
In a lot of ways the FR campaign setting is a lot better than the Greyhawk book. The production value is certainly much better. They are both extremely well written. I guess like the others I just feel that FR is a bit saturated and Greyhawk is a template where I get to fill in the details as a dm.

 

[Emiricol]

That whole "NPCs save the day while you hang around and get in the way, foolish PCs" mentality is (thankfully) gone.

And in my campaigns, I tell the PCs to ignore anything they have read in the past - the 3E books are all that I use, and they aren't too detailed. Framework! Framework is good.

2 bits.

 

[Humanophile]

I don't hate the FR, I just have a stronger-than-average distaste for it. The reason for that bit is because the realms is set as a higher than average power setting, and I remember from my late 2e days people picking over the realms books for the kit/priesthood/spell that would give them that much more oomph. So I dislike it for being a munchkins paradise, but that's more the fault of the munchkins than the setting. (Insert standard disclaimer, high power is not bad in and of itself, but the power level needs to be built into the game and genre. Which leads to my next point...)

It's a high powered, morally definite setting. I find that newer, more casual players tend to go for that, while more in-depth players prefer something a little more gritty and gray. (That's just a general observation, not an overall truism, but black and white cuts out many more options than it opens.)

High powered NPC's, while certainly realistic, diminish the urgency of many adventures. You may die, but Elminster will keep that evil cult from actually calling in a hoarde of demons.

I personally find many of the groups to be shallow and stereotyped, but I haven't read up on everything, just some sourcebooks, adventures, and what I've seen from players/DM's of varying quality. And while most of the NPC's aren't much worse than what your average campaign dredges up, the hoarde of copycats grates strongly. Drizzt would be far more tolerable if he didn't herald a deluge of drow, especially good drow, drow rangers, and good dual-scimitar wielding drow rangers large enough to outnumber the evil, subterranian drow.

And, like many other people pointed out, there's too much for people to keep up on, and munchkin types are the most likely to have every applicable book out there, so more reasonable DM's have too many bad associations.

 

[Castaigne]

I don't know that anyone hates the Forgotten Realms. Some people may prefer other settings for aesthetic reasons, but that hardly qualifies as hatred.

What some people find objectionable are the all-powerful quasi-godlike NPC's that tend to dominate the FR and have their stat blocks printed up in the FRCS. Drizzt and Elminster just really cheese some people off. A lot.

Some, and I name no names mind you, feel that the presence of such personages eclipses the efforts of player characters. Now, it could be argued that the Council of Eight from the World of Greyhawk does much the same thing, but, unless you have access to some super-secret RPGA-only info, there are no 3e stats for those NPC's, and they tend to stay behind the scenes, so you wouldn't need the stats even if there were any. Whereas some players feel that the big guns of Faerun are always waiting in the wings to pretty much obviate anything their characters (the players) might actually accomplish, or so it may seem. To some.

 

[Fenes]

I like the FRCS, but then, I use my own adventures, and editted some choice parts of the official setting. For example, I play the realms as a low magic, low wealth setting. There isn't a whole load of magic items around, and even the Red Wizards only deal with weak potions and scrolls etc. The high-leveled NPCs are busy (and away) just stemming the tide of the best known evil organizations - or the evil organization currently not harrassing the PCs, which means the PCs make a difference.
I like the setting, the different countries and cultures, and I use neither uber-NPCs nor wal-mart-magic-sales, so it works for me.

 

[Numion]

I think that part of the hatred for FR is due to the books, or the fact that these books are added to the FR 'canon'. So we have lots of stupid things written by bad writers added to a world that's meant for gaming.

This results in villains who always lose and superhero goodguys. Worst of all must be by Greenwood himself.

Another might be the fact that FR is so detailed in the many supplements that have been released. Detail per se are not bad, since you use what you want and leave out the rest. But this has lead to an overall inflation of power when every designer has wanted 'leave his mark' on FR and done something special with it. (Like usually adding another high level mage to the setting or something.)

All things said FR is still the best campaign setting for me in 3e. The bad guys have been rationalized (Red Wizards, yeah!) and they are no longer are comicbookish (ok, some are. Yet another coven of evil liches? ). The production values are the best I've seen. The best thing is that I get so many adventure ideas from the FRCS that I'm not going to run out anytime soon.

The points about the high-level NPCs or high-level mages galore are really moot for me. I use what I like, and discard the rest. I can see though that beginning DMs might have problem with this, but then again GH was meant to be the world for beginners.