The New Forgotten Realms - (About) A Year Later

[Primal]

Absolutely.

I still don´t like it, but more power to you in your campaign. In my campaign, however, if i say "Alustriel never existed, ever" or "the Dragonborn blood cult has a sprawling citadel in the Quivering Forest", that´s how it is.
These boots are made for walking.
This setting is made for changing.

That the FR somehow emanates an 15´ radius aura of "only change if the control group would attest your changes an acceptable level of verisimilitude" is simply something that grates with me.

Certainly, but that's the problem with any published setting; if I ran an Eberron campaign with such changes, I'd expect hard core Eberron fans to raise their eyebrows, too. I think it's best to discuss such things with the group when you pick up a setting for the first time. In my group, for example, we have a couple of FR "loremasters" who can spot any change from the canon... the thing is, as long as it makes sense (it's internally consistent with the setting) we don't care. For example, our AoW campaign set in the Western Heartlands has included NPCs and adventure sites from other regions, but they fit the plot seamlessly, so why would we have an issue with this? I might use those same NPCs and locations in another part of the Realms (for another group) or even Golarion, if I feel like it.

Like you said, a DM's word is "how it is" in his/her campaigns. As a player, I might have an issue with major changes such as a homebrewed deity replacing Tempus or Cyric or Alustriel never having existed, but in the end it comes down to how and why; for example, if you said that Alustriel doesn't exist anymore, because she has vanished from the city some years back (and rumours speak of some high-and-mighty planar entity having her as a prisoner), I'd likely find that believable. But that's just me; your campaign is your campaign, and if your players are completely fine with everything, you're doing it the "right" way.

My advice to everyone is that use what you want, and change the rest; if someone in the group has an issue with it, try to talk with your players and tell them why and how it happened.

 

[Shemeska]

These boots are made for walking.
This setting is made for changing.

That the FR somehow emanates an 15´ radius aura of "only change if the control group would attest your changes an acceptable level of verisimilitude" is simply something that grates with me.

I think there's a difference however in DMs changing any aspect of a published setting that they want for the purposes of their own campaign, and a new design team doing the same to that setting for all subsequent published material.

Any DM anywhere can change anything they like, and that sort of creativity to spin off their own ideas from the setting should be encouraged and promoted. There's nothing sacrosanct about FR or any other setting ever that precludes a DM's flexibility in tailoring it to their campaign. I've been rather rightfully called a Planescape fanboy at times, and my God, my own campaigns have been in no way, shape, or form examples of a canonical Planescape campaign. I mangle the setting to suit metaplot and I rewrite its canon to suit the campaign.

But the actual authors/designers of a setting should do their professional best to keep a published world self-consistant with its own body of lore. By doing so they make sure that everyone coming into a setting is on the same page about what the setting is, what it's about, and its themes and atmosphere. A setting's authors should be setting the baseline, and it should be one that's knowledgeable and respectful to previously published work. Massive retcons and deviations from a setting's canon should be for DMs in their own campaigns, not the whimsy of a new hire being given creative control over a setting and remaking it to what they think it should have been like (random example for purposes of argument, not meant to reflect any real situation in specific).

 

[AllisterH]

Eh, I tend to disagree with that Shemeska.

There comes a tipping point when I don't think any writer should be expected to know EVERYTHING about a setting. And having to constantly doublecheck that he isn't violating canon?

(See the thread from the poor guy here who now has to constantly juggle Traveller lore)
There's a reason why many "settings" eventually get a reboot

 

[Banshee16]

Oh, don't get me wrong, "The Ruins of Myth Drannor" is a horrible product. If anyone's reading, for heaven's sake don't go out and buy it. But there are lots of interesting and outright magical places in Myth Drannor.

Where was your warning 14 years ago when I was buying that box?

Banshee

 

[I'm A Banana]

No, you completely missed my point; what I meant is that if you're going to drop a major temple of Bane into Suzail or Silverymoon, I expect an in-game explanation for that. Likewise, if you replace Alustriel or Azoun with an NPC ruler of your own. If you want a setting in which you don't have to read a single book to get the basic facts about a kingdom right, I suggest running homebrewed setting.

Man, I do not grok this mouth-music...

I don't get why I have to justify these changes as a DM. If I say "OK, I'm running a homebrew then, and it's EXACTLY like the Forgotten Realms, except when I say it's not," does that make it better?

Because in my mind, that is the exact same thing as saying "I'm going to run a game in the Forgotten Realms."

DMs always have the authority to change their setting as much as they want. When a DM plays in FR, for his group, it's HIS setting. I ran a game in 3e FR where the Cthulu mythos invaded and basically did what the Spellplague did but with more darkness, insanity, violence, death, doom, and hopelessness. There were some FR fans in that group. I am not an FR scholar. I'm sure I got things wrong. No one ever said "you can't do that!" to me. I can't imagine a scenario where I would take someone saying that seriously. I believe my response would normally be along the lines of "I just did, so unless you want to DM a game, roll with it."

But I do have a strict "I want you to actually play the game" rule at my tables. Applies for DM authority, inter-party disputes, alignment, and character motivation. Solves all those problems rather well, IMXP.

New temples? Replaced NPC's? Man, when you're the DM, feel free to have as much fidelity as you want, but when I'm the DM, I'm going to do a little Shiva dance in the ashes of whatever I want. Don't like it? That's cool, too, I like to play as much as I like to DM, and I get the chance more rarely.

 

[SteveC]

No, you completely missed my point; what I meant is that if you're going to drop a major temple of Bane into Suzail or Silverymoon, I expect an in-game explanation for that. Likewise, if you replace Alustriel or Azoun with an NPC ruler of your own. If you want a setting in which you don't have to read a single book to get the basic facts about a kingdom right, I suggest running homebrewed setting.

I think this is the reason the Realms needed a reboot in a nutshell. If I'm running an FR game, I'm the GM, not WotC, not Ed Greenwood, me. Frankly I don't have the time or interest to study something with the level of detail that is necessary to satisfy the Realms purists out there.

When I play in a 4E Realms game, which I do a lot in the living realms, I don't have to endure the purists, because it's a reboot.

The best game I've ever played in the Realms had a lot of purists in it, and the GM handled continuity questions like this:

"Hold on how can there be a temple of Bane here? That simply can't be!"

GM: You're right. Make a Will save, DC 20.

Player: Uh, okay...fail?

GM: Take 1 wisdom drain as your mind simply can't come to terms with the awesome alterations to reality that some entity from the the Far Realms must have made.

Player: ...

Seriously: it was a good game, made with the core realms book and that was about it. The GM invented the rest, and had us make relevant knowledge checks to see what we actually knew about the world. It was HIS Forgotten Realms at the end of the day.

So that's why I'm enjoying playing in the new world. I'd even consider running a game in it, which I would never say about the previous editions after the first couple of years it was out.

So how well are the new Realms being received? I think it depends a lot on how much you have invested in the previous edition's lore and how willing you are to embrace change.

--Steve

 

[Primal]

Man, I do not grok this mouth-music...

I don't get why I have to justify these changes as a DM. If I say "OK, I'm running a homebrew then, and it's EXACTLY like the Forgotten Realms, except when I say it's not," does that make it better?

Because in my mind, that is the exact same thing as saying "I'm going to run a game in the Forgotten Realms."

DMs always have the authority to change their setting as much as they want. When a DM plays in FR, for his group, it's HIS setting. I ran a game in 3e FR where the Cthulu mythos invaded and basically did what the Spellplague did but with more darkness, insanity, violence, death, doom, and hopelessness. There were some FR fans in that group. I am not an FR scholar. I'm sure I got things wrong. No one ever said "you can't do that!" to me. I can't imagine a scenario where I would take someone saying that seriously. I believe my response would normally be along the lines of "I just did, so unless you want to DM a game, roll with it."

But I do have a strict "I want you to actually play the game" rule at my tables. Applies for DM authority, inter-party disputes, alignment, and character motivation. Solves all those problems rather well, IMXP.

New temples? Replaced NPC's? Man, when you're the DM, feel free to have as much fidelity as you want, but when I'm the DM, I'm going to do a little Shiva dance in the ashes of whatever I want. Don't like it? That's cool, too, I like to play as much as I like to DM, and I get the chance more rarely.

See, that's the trouble with settings and published lore and different gaming styles; I know people who don't ever read the "fluffy" parts from the books (not even in the campaign setting) and everyone is still fine with it. Doesn't work in every group, though. And although this "canon fanaticism" is often attributed to FR, every book/movie/setting has its own diehard fans; I'm sure there are people on this forum who would rise and walk out if I ran, say, a SW campaign and said "Darth Vader? Who's Darth Vader?" or "Oh, that annoying Skywalker never existed in my campaign". At the very least I would probably need to justify how my version without Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is different from the "official" SW Universe.

I'm not sure why people pick up published settings if they're not willing to read the books (and I'm not saying you have to read *EVERY* book); running a homebrew setting would be much easier, if you have fanatic Eberron/Dragonlance/FR/Etcetera fans in the group.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think this is the reason the Realms needed a reboot in a nutshell.

I think that it could have been done with a lighter touch that would've kept purists happy, though.

A broad overview, and advice to "fill in the gaps yourself," and a note that "every FR game is unique" might go a long way toward accomplishing that goal, without needing to totally invalidate those who do enjoy the muckety-muck of detail.

In a lot of ways, this is how I see Planescape 4e: the core books have given a broad overview, none of which has specifically invalidated anything that has come before, and leaves room for it to happen, without giving details about it, so that someone can still come in and do whatever they want with it.

I happen to dig a lot of the old 2e Planescape material, so my Planescape 4e is going to look a lot like Planescape 2e. But someone who is new to the game using Sigil for the first time might not, say, bother with the Factions, and that should be totally OK for their own game, and if I'm playing in that game, I have no right to say "But the Doomguard only controls the Armory before the Faction War! And the Sensates don't really believe that! And the Athar would probably be involved here."

Fluff-lawyering is the same monster as rules-lawyering and it's equally as useless in running a solid game.

 

[SteveC]

I think that it could have been done with a lighter touch that would've kept purists happy, though.

I happen to dig a lot of the old 2e Planescape material, so my Planescape 4e is going to look a lot like Planescape 2e. But someone who is new to the game using Sigil for the first time might not, say, bother with the Factions, and that should be totally OK for their own game, and if I'm playing in that game, I have no right to say "But the Doomguard only controls the Armory before the Faction War! And the Sensates don't really believe that! And the Athar would probably be involved here."

Fluff-lawyering is the same monster as rules-lawyering and it's equally as useless in running a solid game.

I agree with you 100%: there was an extreme renovation done, and I can see how that might be alarming to the purists. But as to your second point, that's the kind of game I would really enjoy: you're really interested in a particular look and feel for your Planescape game, and if I'm playing it I'm going to want to explore that world and see what's interesting about it. In the end it's your game, and that makes it infinitely more interesting to me than just reading a Planescape supplement or novel.

--Steve

 

[I'm A Banana]

See, that's the trouble with settings and published lore and different gaming styles; I know people who don't ever read the "fluffy" parts from the books (not even in the campaign setting) and everyone is still fine with it. Doesn't work in every group, though. And although this "canon fanaticism" is often attributed to FR, every book/movie/setting has its own diehard fans; I'm sure there are people on this forum who would rise and walk out if I ran, say, a SW campaign and said "Darth Vader? Who's Darth Vader?" or "Oh, that annoying Skywalker never existed in my campaign". At the very least I would probably need to justify how my version without Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is different from the "official" SW Universe.

You're right that it's not unique to FR, but almost no matter where it's done, it's annoying. It's like the cliche of having George Takei answer angry continuity questions at a Trek convention. You've taken all the fun out of make-believe storytelling.

Now, that's the view from the outside. I'm well aware that some people have a lot of fun plumbing the lore depths of their favorite X. That's fine and good and neat and shouldn't be invalidated haphazardly in the official documents.

But you should be able to take off the truefan hat and enjoy the game regardless. If you can't, that kind of is a problem because it functionally means that no one else can make that setting their own. It's yours, not theirs. In D&D, that's part and parcel of the fun of running a game: adapting it for your own group.

As a less-dorky example, I have a roommate who is crazy into the Beatles. She gets really angry whenever someone claims to be really into the Beatles, and she kind of enters this one-upmanship of "who loves them more" with the person, an impromptu trivia quiz and rattling off of facts and things. This can be an issue, because she doesn't let people appreciate the Beatles on their own level: it has to be on HER terms, they can't have their OWN experiences with the band. I have to beat her about the neck and face on a regular basis for it, too. He's allowed to have his own Beatles experience. Your DM is allowed to run his own FR experience.

I'm not sure why people pick up published settings if they're not willing to read the books (and I'm not saying you have to read *EVERY* book); running a homebrew setting would be much easier, if you have fanatic Eberron/Dragonlance/FR/Etcetera fans in the group.

Sometimes you read the book and you choose to go a different route for your own purposes. For instance, perhaps the DM wants to put their own leader in charge so that said leader can be evil.

Sometimes you read it and you don't care for it. "Oh. It's boring to have the only public churches being non-Evil ones. Let's add some evil ones."

Sometimes you read it but don't remember it "What was the name of this king?"

Sometimes you don't read it because another part interests you more. "Nobody cares what the ruler's name is, because that's not what the game is about this time!"

The idea is, of course, that as a DM, you get to choose what exists and what doesn't.

The written material never trumps the DM's say-so, be it in a rule or in the fluff.