D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[ccs]

The "time of troubles" adventures were the biggest piece of 2e "story-driven adventures" crap that I've seen, a big reason I gave up playing a lot of D&D not long after 2e came out because adventures went from simple concise site-based dungeons or similar, to over-blown novels trying to be an adventure. In the "time of troubles" adventures, the PC's get to watch gods battle, led around by Elminster, from near Thay, to Waterdeep, with an NPC who is better than any PC and must accompany them because she turns into Mystra at the end of the 3rd adventure. And another NPC also turns emo mid-way through and by the end he's the new god of murder. Honestly, I read all three adventures again recently, and struggled to see where the actual "adventure" was, unless the players got bored and just randomly attacked NPCs or Gods, and even then of course the silly PC's can't win and yet they must be lead by the nose to see the scripted ending. So you see, that's one example of why some people don't like the FR.

Hmm. Our approaches to TSR (and later WoTC) producing crap is vastly different.
You quit playing the game.
Me & mine? We just largely stopped buying stuff. And the stuff we did buy? If after reading through it we determined it was actually crap or wouldn't work for our group? We didn't run it. It went onto the shelf/into the storage box & never resurfaced.
But we never stopped playing. We just continued on making our own adventures & content for various spots on the map....

As for the much hated "Time of Troubles"?
By the time it came out our own FR campaign (summer of '87 - summer '92) had already progressed in ways wich negated it. There was no way to implement it story-wise. The only 2e change for us was re-writing the character sheets.
Our next FR campaign in '93? The guy running it had never read the ToT novels or adventure modules. And those of us that had? Well, we'd ignored it when it was new because it didn't fit our game & just didn't think about it in the new campaign. We were focused on whatever adventures & twists the current DM was cooking up. And guess what? It didn't matter wich character from a crappy novel was calling herself the goddess of magic. Nor was it ever important who the god of murder was.

From what I figured out even in 1e days, that seems to be the Ed Greenwood style of DMing... (or if it's not, his real style doesn't come out in what he's got his name on).

Well thankfully he's never been our DM.

 

[Staffan]

There were a few minor to mid-level changes, but nothing really world-shattering. The return of Bane was likely the most notable event, and even that flowed logically to anyone paying attention to what was going on with Iyachtu Xvim over the course of 2e.

It was also leaked in the Living City reference document they released about half a year before the FRCS. Well, not overtly, but it was fairly obvious that they had just done a global search-and-replace of "Bane" with "Xvim". For one thing, domains listed the gods that granted that domain in alphabetical order... except that Xvim was always near the start instead of the end. And one of the domains (Fear, I think) granted access to the Xvim spell.

That said, sounds like a 8 year old kid came up with alot of the names in FR...Eveningstar, Waterdeep,Unermountain, Shadowdale, Storm Silverhand, Florin Falconhand, Darkhold, Neverwinter, Moonbeam Fancypants,etc..

I have many beefs with FR, but naming conventions is not one of them. Having places named after some prominent terrain feature is downright normal - it's just that in our world, language has gotten away from the names and/or the names have gotten a bit corrupted since the naming. For example, my hometown's name is Växjö, which is a corruption of Väg-sjö, or Road-lake - the lake where the roads meet. Or for a more fantasy-based name: Rivendell just means the valley (dell) in the cleft (riven).

Waterdeep is named for the exceptionally deep natural harbor where the city was built. Darkhold is a fort (a hold) that's built and manned by dark forces. Neverwinter is near a source of volcanic heat, meaning the river that runs through it never freezes over. I also don't see any problem with names like Falconhand or Silverhand - they seem rather natural to me. Swedish names, when not boring patronyms, are often based on animals or other natural features.

 

[ccs]

That's the thing though. If I'm just going to add my own stuff anyway, why am I using a setting with an Encyclopedia Britannica level of detail?

Well I'm using it because the maps already drawn & has been on my shelf for years & years....
And that Encyclopedia Britannica detail? It's a tool. If I don't feel like making up all the details of place x I'll just google it then pick & choose.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As I suspected--expectations. Both of those considerations carry exactly zero weight with me and my group. And we've definitely never felt "small and unimportant."

yes

how dare i expect a world to be internally consistent and to not collapse when placed under the smallest amount of scrutiny

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I want my campaign settings to be about me integrating my ideas as a DM and highlighting the actions of my players. FR is just packed with Mary Sues who do all the heavy lifting. Also I want more humanoid-centric intrigue, there are precious few large, powerful and relatively stable kingdoms to play with. The Sword Coast is a bunch of city states that seem to exist as adventurer lily pads rather than hot spots for plots and wickedness. Say what you will about Grayhawk but it at least had some good, old feudalism to draw players in from time to time.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I use Forgotten Realms in my campaign. I use several other settings, as well, all connected by Sigil/Planescape.

The Realms allow me to use what I want and there is a plethora of material I can draw from. It's familiar enough to my players so that they get a kick out of some of the characters or places they encounter, but I don't adhere to all the published material, so there are still plenty of surprises.

None of the big NPCs that people are talking about....Elminster and Drizzt and the like....have ever appeared in my game. There's simply no need for me to introduce them. Why would I? I use other NPCs, especially villains, but there's no need for me to use the heroes of novels in my game. Not sure why so many people are insisting that such characters need to be addressed. Why? Ignore them....problem solved.

I think the reasons for the hate have mostly been pointed out in this thread. There's obviously many reasons. I think the biggest one that has been mentioned is resentment of the presence of the Realms and preference for other settings.

The only thing I'll add is the feeling that a DM needs to know EVERYTHING about a setting in order to run a game in it. Many folks seem to feel this way, and I'm not entirely sure why. I would expect that if they were homebrewing, they likely wouldn't know everything about the world (some exceptions of course, but generally there'd be some undetermined areas) and that would not cause anyone to hesitate.

I suppose the one time I can see it is if you have players who know a ton more Realms lore than the DM. In a case like that, it might be a pain to constantly be second guessed if you don't get the details of what Lugard is like or how hot it is in Calimshan or whatever. And telling the player "hey these Realms are different than the Realms you know" probably gets old. So I can understand a DM in that situation deciding not to use the Realms. But that's a pretty specific situation.

 

[QuietBrowser]

What 5e really needs is a "generic" setting that's has all the people/places/things laid out, but doesn't come with the baggage of FR published books and lore, rather than a constant stream of official FR AP's that have some nearly-useless blurb about how to port it over to other settings. If I have to save the Sword Coast from another major threat, I'm going to puke.

Sad thing is, we got exactly that with Points of Light/Nentir Vale for 4th edition, and frankly I think it had some of the best fluff of any official D&D setting. WoTC was so eager to throw 4e's babies out with the bathwater that we lost everything that actually made that setting good.

 

[Derren]

But that's the whole point! In a fantasy world you *can* do this and have it work.

Why? Just because its fantasy doesn't mean that basic logic gets thrown out of the window. It works as long as you do not ask questions or poke it. Fantasy has nothing to do with it.

I mean, neither Arthurian England nor Renaissance Italy had to worry about the Dwarves in the mountains or Elves in the forests, did they...or raiding orcs coming down out of the hills on a regular basis...

There is not that much difference between Barbary coast pirates and orcs.

Well, every game I ever run is going to have classical Greeks and-or Romans in it somewhere, and Celtic tribes, and Vikings, one or more renaissance-era cultures, and some sort of far-eastern (Mongolian? Japanese?) cultures as well...and Dwarves and Elves and Hobbits and monsters*. In my current game I've also got variants on Egyptian, Sumerian, Persian and early French (i.e. France just after the Norse invaded and settled down) along with one or two human cultures that I've made up out of nothing.

There is easily a difference of 1 millennia between the earliest and the latest of those cultures and most of the time the pop culture understanding people have about a culture is closely tied to its used technologies. This either means that either you end up with a society nobody actually recognizes at what it is or that there are extreme technological differences between close neighbouring nations which make no sense. It works as long as no one asks questions or tries to use this difference in game. But when someone does all comes crashing down.

My view of fantasy history pretty much lines up with Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert: throw it all in a blender and see what fun results.

Except that you are forget the blender. Instead you place them one next to the other and hope that they do not mix.

 

[jayoungr]

yes

how dare i expect a world to be internally consistent and to not collapse when placed under the smallest amount of scrutiny

Please chill. I did say you were entitled to your opinion.

My opinion (just that, nothing more) is that I don't especially care about the parts of the world I'm not playing in and whether they hang together or not.

 

[Raunalyn]

It's not so much that I hate FR; I think it's horribly generic, but it does have an impressive amount of detail. Some like that, some don't. My personal preference is to just have a sketch of an area, and I fill in the details.

No, the only part I really hate about FR is Drizzt.

That Gary Stu little tweak. I still think that he's secretly evil; he conspired to have Wulfgar killed so that he could have Cattie-Brie, and I also think he's the second gunman on the grassy knoll.