Why *Dont* you like Forgotten Realms?

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

You don't like Elminster? Well, maybe it's just a legend, a myth, like Gilgamesh or Heracles.

XP worthy! Only I have to spread it around......

 

[the Jester]

First off, to those of you defending the lame-ass FR pantheon- why? This is a thread about WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT FR. A lot of people seem to not like the pantheon; they (we) find it shallow and superficial on many levels.

Boom, opinion stated.

Why are some of you guys so interested in debating this? If you want to do so, that's fine, but maybe start a new thread? I keep seeing a lot of "Oh, you have misconceptions" going on in here. NO- people have OPINIONS. Calling their opinion a misconception is silly- it's an opinion. Is it grounded in bad information? No, it's not. It is grounded in the experience that the Realms have inflicted on D&D. Again, just my opinion- but don't bother arguing, because there's no right and wrong here, there are only opinions.

That said, I'll just join the chorus that says "has appeared in a bunch of supplements and novels" doesn't make a deity or pantheon better, it makes it more exposed. It's like a steak- it doesn't necessarily get better just because you cook it longer.

Greyhawk's deities have had a lot of development, but the problem is that Greyhawk as a whole hasn't had a lot of world-specific stuff published for it since 1e, excepting the Paizo run on Dungeon. Their development is spread out through modules, articles and other places.

FWIW, I find the 4e pantheon to be nearly as dissatisfying as the FR one, except for the fact that the gods are cooler (again, IMHO)- I will take Torog, Tharizdun and Vecna over Umberlee, Loviatar and Cyric any day.

 

[Philosopher]

Man, I've done my time in the metaplot trenches (for something totally not D&D, mind), and I have to say, heavy metaplot does not necessarily connote a unifying theme. Metaplots by their very nature can easily spin out of control.

I don't think there's any tension there. Just because the world contains fantasy ancient Egypt and fantasy middle ages Arabic nations and fantasy medieval France and fantasy Celtic Britain* doesn't mean the gods can't come down from heaven, wreck all of them and change the laws of magic again.

*This is something I have no problem with, I like kitchen sink.

Okay, fair enough. I took "unifying theme" differently, but I see what you guys mean.

Again, I'm far more interested in a more martial-heavy approach to a campaign. However, I do like the idea of the Circle of Eight, because a) there are only eight of them, so if they're not treated as omnipotent, they're going to miss out on a lot of things, b) they're seriously fallible, having been gutted by treachery before, and c) they can play an adversarial role as well as a helping role, and thanks to b), that means that PCs can defy them in a way that proves interesting instead of just automatically losing. They seem eminently usable to me.

I think this is just the right way to use the CoE... and how I think the Harpers should be used. Like I said, I think the main problem is implementation. It does seem like everyone you meet ends up being a member of the Harpers, which makes them seem very powerful because they're everywhere. (Nevermind the fact that when they keep revealing themselves, it's not much of a secret society anymore.) But there are ways of handling that in your own campaign. Perhaps many people claim to be members of the Harpers when they're not really. So long as they don't commit evil acts in the name of the organization, the Harpers may not really care. In fact, they may find it useful - making them look more powerful by having agents everywhere. These people may admire the Harpers and share their aims. Perhaps they call themselves Harpers in the same way that I might call myself a secular humanist - it's a moral/political/philosophical/whatever framework that I basically agree with, and I proclaim that agreement with the label, even though I have never joined any organization promoting such a view.

There are many ways of being creative with the Realms. The fact that it has lots of detail doesn't get in the way of creativity - it's a creative challenge. Sometimes I find that the more constraints people have to work with, the greater the potential for creativity. I recently read a comment by someone (I think it was on the Paizo boards) that applies here. The basic sentiment is that thinking outside the box is a great thing, but not if you refuse to consider some of the potential that's still inside the box.

 

[Philosopher]

First off, to those of you defending the lame-ass FR pantheon- why? This is a thread about WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT FR. A lot of people seem to not like the pantheon; they (we) find it shallow and superficial on many levels.

Because it's a discussion board. If this was just about stating opinion without responding, there wouldn't be much point to it.

Why are some of you guys so interested in debating this? If you want to do so, that's fine, but maybe start a new thread? I keep seeing a lot of "Oh, you have misconceptions" going on in here. NO- people have OPINIONS. Calling their opinion a misconception is silly- it's an opinion. Is it grounded in bad information? No, it's not. It is grounded in the experience that the Realms have inflicted on D&D. Again, just my opinion- but don't bother arguing, because there's no right and wrong here, there are only opinions.

The word "opinion" is used in (at least) two different ways. Insofar as it refers to one's tastes, then yes, there is no right and wrong. Insofar as it refers to a belief (such as about what the Realms is like), then opinions are either right or wrong. People are not merely stating that they like one thing and dislike another thing. They offer reasons why they like/dislike things. They describe the Realms when referring to what they like/dislike. The reasons offered may be relevant to the point being made or they may not. The descriptions may be correct or they may not. There's plenty of room for discussion here. If you just want to state your opinion without allowing discussion, set up a blog and disable comments.

That said, I'll just join the chorus that says "has appeared in a bunch of supplements and novels" doesn't make a deity or pantheon better, it makes it more exposed. It's like a steak- it doesn't necessarily get better just because you cook it longer.

Greyhawk's deities have had a lot of development, but the problem is that Greyhawk as a whole hasn't had a lot of world-specific stuff published for it since 1e, excepting the Paizo run on Dungeon. Their development is spread out through modules, articles and other places.

FWIW, I find the 4e pantheon to be nearly as dissatisfying as the FR one, except for the fact that the gods are cooler (again, IMHO)- I will take Torog, Tharizdun and Vecna over Umberlee, Loviatar and Cyric any day.

This, FWIW, I largely agree with (except for the 4e deities being cooler than the FR ones - Tharizdun and Vecna are awesome, but that's because of their having been fleshed out in Greyhawk lore).

 

[Diamond Cross]

I think people are having problem with the pantheon is not really because of them being two-dimensional, rather than there's very little information about them other than this is their spheres, and these are the people who worship them. I think people are confusing "not enough information" with being "two dimensional". If you don't have enough information about anybody, anybody is going to seem two dimensional.

In reality, most gods have a lot of legends about them.

 

[Cor_Malek]

For people here.
1. (why?) Do you avoid Forgotten Realms products?
2. Do you like either Pre or Post spellplague only, and if so which one and why?
3. What Don't you like about Forgotten Realms?

(from "So far we've got" part I gathered the 1st question should look as I edited, not just a y/n).

1. I find it very inconvenient to use a setting with so much (IMO) unnecessary splat. Describe the world, and in next products focus on certain areas or aspects. As a person that want's 1-2 setting books tops, FR causes a very bad case of archive panic. And I can't DM a game in FR with players that know this world better, because it's going to be annoying to them when I cleave through it, and put a brothel where they know a super-secret-angels club should be.
2. Huh?
3. It's not good in any aspect I look for. Or maybe there are worlds better in those aspects, which, as far as I'm concerned - is potayto-potatoh. I don't like it as grim, I can't imagine it as jolly-brutal, nor as loaded with Pathos. I guess it fits very well to what I think of as high-fantasy, but then again I don't really like them apples.
Put me down for "bleh H-F" ;-)

As for 3rd point, to elaborate a bit and give examples:
Grim worlds: world from The Witcher saga (yeah, not much help, I know. Imagine if the world from Romain Sardou's Forgive us our Sins was fantasied up a notch). 3rd quart of XIV, XV-XVI c. middle-ages custom, and if I really felt like reading setting books - Warhammer world. Maybe XX c.
Jolly-Brutal: World from Firefly, Pathfinder Campaign Setting (expensive in print, so I keep mentioning it in gifts-conversations, nudge-nudge), Late XVI-XVIII c. custom, Treasure Island

 

[Alzrius]

Dragon Magazine #54 (Oct. '81), "Down-to-Earth Divinity", by Ed Greenwood. He describes how he made up his pantheon based on deities from Deities & Demigods. (Incidentally, he also appeals to Elminster the Sage, and mentions using a "Godswar" in which some gods are killed, others stripped of their power, new ones ascending, etc., in order to explain differences in moving from the D&D rules to the AD&D rules.) Some examples:

He explicitly says Azuth is a renamed Aarth (from the Nehwon - i.e., Fritz Leiber's - mythos. Bane is the equivalent of Druaga (from the Babylonian mythos). Loviatar and Mielikki are directly from the Finnish mythos (including the names). There are plenty of others that follow this pattern. Mystra seems to be his own creation (although he describes her as "a manifestation of the Cosmic Balance"), as do a few others.

Hmm, I wasn't aware of that. Touche.

It's a bottom up pantheon composed of deities chosen out of the Deities and Demigods manual.

[...]

Although, once again, you keep substituting 'developed' (your point) for 'concieved' (my point).

This is where we seem to be having a fundamental disconnect. You seem to be of the opinion that how something is initially created sets how multi-dimensional it appears. I'm of the opinion that the circumstances of something's creation is far less important than what it does after that.

Maybe the FR deities were initially reflavored from the 1E Deities and Demigods - over several editions and numerous novels and sourcebooks, they've had enough written about them that they've quite clearly broken away from that and become their own characters.

The fact that the GR deities were more original in initial creation is, to me, meaningless, since they've gotten no further coverage since then save to restate the same few sparse paragraphs over and over. When you go thirty years without learning something new about a character beyond that, without them doing anything during that time, then that character is one-dimensional.

This is to say nothing of the fact that calling certain FR deities nothing more than place-holders for patrons of certain classes is equally true or the Greyhawk gods.

But, back to the topic of family, it's that you can write sentences about the Greyhawk deities like:

"Berna is the third child of the serpent god Meyanok, transformed by the power of Xanag from a spirit of hate to one of passion. Her older siblings are Vara and Damaran. Her grandmother is Breeka and her great-grandmother is the sun goddess Nola, who was awakened by the creator god Uvot."

The topic of divine family is fundamentally irrelevant to what we're discussing. You've given, in your example, a single sentence about Berna, which tells us exactly one fact about who she is; the rest of it is just who she's related to, which doesn't expand her character. If you consider that multi-dimensional characterization, then there's not enough commonality in our respective definitions of that term to continue this discussion.

Here I must confess that if the multitude FR novels make the FR deities seem interesting, that I would have completely missed out on that.

Well, yeah, if you never actually read anything about a character, I suppose they can seem like not much of a character at all. Isn't that the crux of the "uninformed opinion"?

Sadly (or not), this situation is likely to persist and my opinion remain unchanged, because the few FR novels that were thrust upon me by eager friends proved to be almost wholly disappointing and in some cases rank with the worst fantasy fiction I've ever read. If it is your opinion that the FR novels make the FR deities and pantheon seem truly deep and interesting, then I can only take your word for it.

No one's saying that all of the FR novels are good - certainly not me. I can't stand Ed Greenwood's writing (I'm getting ready to write a review of Elminster Must Die that will make it clear how much I disliked the book), nor Elaine Cunningham's, and after over a dozen books of him, I'm finally sick of R. A. Salvatore's Drizzt books too.

There are other authors, however, who're quite good at what they write, and in many cases that deals with the various deities. But even beyond that, the fact that the deities as character grow and change over the course of novels and game supplements is, by definition, characterization - now, you can say that it's good or bad characterization, and you may not find the latter interesting, but it's a hard charge to make that even bad characterization is worse than none at all.

And "none at all" is exactly how much characterization the Greyhawk gods have gotten...how interesting is it to have virtual non-entities for gods?

The incarnation of a very troubling philosophical question that remains throughly relevant to modern life, namely, "If nature is cruel and indifferent to man, is man's domination over nature a good thing, or is it merely destruction given a pretty face?"

That's not him though, that's a metaphor that you think he represents. The deity Phyton hasn't actually done anything except exist as a symbol for a question - making him interchangeable with any other relevant symbol. FR's Chauntea, herself a formerly wild goddess of nature who now represents controlled agriculture, stands in for the same metaphor easily enough.

D&D deities aren't supposed to be "philosophical questions that remain thoroughly reelvant to modern life." They're supposed to be interesting parts of a game - and in that regard, the forgotten footnotes of a pantheon are neither interesting nor fun.

Earlier you claimed the problem was I wasn't very familiar with the FR deities. Here I return the accusation to you.

Compared with someone who freely admits he hasn't read the material? I may have been unaware of a Dragon article about their origin, but I'm far and away more familiar than you are with what's been done with them since, and that's the more relevant aspect of what we're discussing.

 

[Barastrondo]

There are many ways of being creative with the Realms. The fact that it has lots of detail doesn't get in the way of creativity - it's a creative challenge. Sometimes I find that the more constraints people have to work with, the greater the potential for creativity. I recently read a comment by someone (I think it was on the Paizo boards) that applies here. The basic sentiment is that thinking outside the box is a great thing, but not if you refuse to consider some of the potential that's still inside the box.

Oh, absolutely. At that level of work, though, you have to get a certain something out of a published setting that makes it worthwhile to use that setting instead of a homebrew, just like a homebrew setting has to justify the work you put into it. When you add players into the mix, they swing it further. My cousin would probably love if I ran an FR game; he's a big fan of all the novels. My brother likes the more personalized feel of a homebrew, and my wife's got heavy investment in my homebrew in specific.

I do enjoy working within constraints, though. They're usually bizarre self-imposed constraints, mind, like "How am I going to do a St. Patrick's Day-themed game subtle enough that the players don't get it at first?" or "I'm going to base this assassin order on very heavily disguised Mortal Kombat characters."

 

[Azgulor]

When the original gray box was released, I was an early FR adopter. The setting appealed to me in that in provided a more "zoomed in" view that Greyhawk and a rich history. What sealed the deal were the early Gazetteer releases that provided greater detail on individual regions. Even though I missed the human subdivisions of Oerth, FR seemed more "GM-friendly" to me in those younger days when I was still a relatively new GM.

Unfortunately, as the setting developed I became less enamored. The success of the novel line, which I initially enjoyed, only seemed to accelerate all of the things I disliked.

The setting became increasingly more High Fantasy to the point that trying to run a more traditional swords-n-sorcery game felt like a complete different setting and the work necessary to remove the over-the-top elements soon became work with a domino-effect that ate into time better spent developing NPCs & adventures.

The Time of Troubles was the beginning of the end, but it was only the first of what would come to be known as "Realms-Shaking-Events". Consistency & creativity went out the window in what seemed to be an ever-escalating arms race of one-upmanship by TSR writers. Every D&D campaign release seemed to be bolted onto the Realms in short order (Hordelands, Kara-Tur, Maztica, SpellJammer, etc.) & the ever-growing list of "races that ruled an ancient empire" resulted in abundant retconning of the setting in order to include them. The overuse of uber-NPCs, even if only as window-dressing only kept the gasoline flowing to the fire.

Ultimately, I ended the campaign older & wiser about campaign design & campaign purchases and returned to Greyhawk. To this day, I'm still stunned by how little I missed the setting I had used for 5+ years.

Given my departure from the Realms as a rpg setting, the Spellplague nonsense of 4e just seemed like more of the same, but turned up to 11.

To date, the Forgotten Realms is the only fantasy RPG setting where I've sold off or thrown away my entire stock of campaign material. Haven't missed it a bit.

 

[WizarDru]

Hmmm. The Forgotten Realms. Some thoughts:

I remember when the Realms was the 'new upstart'. D&D had already had Greyhawk, but in all honesty, most people I knew used a homebrew setting or not true setting at all, at the time. Stuff just happened. When there was interconnection (as much by modules by EGG as anything else), it was loose and tenuous. I knew one guy in high school who had the Greyhawk boxed set (the source of much envy), but when we played modules like Tomb of Horrors, Hidden Shrine of Tomaochan or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, we didn't much care who the Duke of Geoff was or where the Great Kingdom was located. It didn't tell us anything about vegepygmys, did it?

So, the Realms. Do I dislike it? I have no great dislike, but no great love, either. I am effectively neutral about it. My total investment in 30 years of D&D in the setting consists of The Ruins of Myth Drannor (which I came to regret as less useful than I wanted, then later came to appreciate for other uses), the 3e FRCS and....ummm....well, that's it, I guess.

I am surprised at the level of dislike for FR, but to each his own. Why don't I like the setting all that much or use it? A few reasons, historically:

• SO. MUCH. MATERIAL.: This was a symptom of 2e overall, to me, but as FR become the core setting for D&D then, it was something I associated with it, implicitly. So many books and supplements and new things came out that it was overwhelming and difficult to track. To someone like me, who was a poor student at the time and not into the new edition, it became untenable to keep up. And the sheer volume of releases became a barrier to entry. If I need the Magister to understand the module, I'll buy neither if money is tight.
• Unstable Setting: It seemed to me, regardless of the reality, that FR changed. A lot. ALL THE TIME. Hell, I enjoyed the heck out of the D&D FR comics from DC in 1989, written by Jeff Grubb, no less. And what happens about a year into it? The Time of Troubles. It was funny watching the characters adapt to the changes that 2e wrought in comic form, but it seemed like FR, as a setting, tends to yank the rug out from underneath the DM a lot. Some DMs surely enjoy the feeling of a 'living' setting and that's cool. I'm more of a 'let's keep the sweeping changes to once a decade, 'kay?' kind of guy.
• Broke my Suspension of Disbelief Too Often: Much is made of the high-level NPCs, rampant magic and general over-the-top nature of Faerun. I get that. For me, it wasn't that Elminster was a huge power or even that every town had a few high-level NPCs, per se. It was how the setting seemed...well, like a manufactured setting. Adventuring groups were considered a valid and COMMON vocation. Magic was everywhere and aplenty, but unlike Eberron, the setting didn't seem to recognize any changes evolving from this. I can ignore stuff like 'Hong's Chickens', which emphasizes the 'don't think to hard about it' mantra. But too much of FR's setting (as much as I learned of it) was too big of a break from I personally could ignore or rationalize, like the dungeon under Waterdeep. It was a fun idea, but it just was more than I could rationally do.
• Didn't like the Aesthetics: Many have said the found the setting bland. I wouldn't go so far. I found, though, that I didn't find anything that really sang to me. I didn't and probably still couldn't tell you what made the Forgotten Realms different, what it's individual 'feel' was. I can look at Eberron or Dark Sun or Ravenloft or even Spelljammer and get something from it. But the Realms felt like the all-inclusive setting that was generic. This was true of Greyhawk, too...but Greyhawk felt so customizable...in fact, demanded it, that it felt more personal if you used it. I felt like I could do about the same for my personal use (not saying I could produce anything on the scale or quality of FR for the use of others...in point of fact the production values always appeared great) and had little need for FR.
• Too Tied to the Fiction: I always felt, right or wrong, that I was expected to keep abreast of the changes to the setting and details in general, via the novels. In the days before the Internet's adoption and spread of the 'World Wide Web', there were few ways to get around that notion. As the years passed, that notion stuck, regardless of the reality.[/b]

I should also note that part of this comes from my moving away from D&D during 2e, a version I didn't play and heavily associated with the Forgotten Realms. Guilt by association and all that. When I returned with 3E, the Greyhawk I grew up with returned, too.

There are things about the FR I think are really interesting. I love some of the ideas in play...both mechanical and conceptual. I love when Ed Greenwood did FR articles of fantastic places. I actually liked flipping through the Volo's Guides'....the ideas presented there were lots of fun and good kickoff points to adventures. I've enjoyed occasionally playing in the Realms and certainly have found many adventures are setting agnostic. And I marveled at one friend who took ALL the FR maps, laminated them and mounted them on a dorm room wall.

So while the Realms are not my favorite place to play and somewhere I've never run...I've never run anything other than Greyhawk, homebrew or generic. I liked to read all those settings, and 'kind of' liked them. But when it translated into SALES, most of the reasons above prevented me from opening my wallet. The only settings I've ever bought were Greyhawk and Eberron (and the afore-mentioned FRCS).

Would I choose to run an FR game if I found something appealing? Sure. Myth Drannor could make a fun campaign, for example. But there are more unique settings out there that have something more to offer, so it's not likely. Dark Sun has a flavor that's much different from my homebrew and that's where FR loses ground. It has no unique element for me to recommend it. Which is not a problem, but it is a preference.