D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[Lanefan]

Which means you are not actually using the realms, you just use a 3rd party map for your games.

So by your definition someone using only the original gray box all these years isn't running a FR game?

That seems a bit over the top.

This gets back to the core theme of a major thread in here from last fall to do with canon and lore and so forth, where some people (not me!) argued that pretty much any DM-induced change to established canon in a setting invalidated the game as being a <whatever setting> game.

But here, the issue is timing. If, for example, I'd started a campaign in 1990 or so (whenever the gray box came out) and used the info as written then...and then ignored all the additional "official" material that came later because events and changes within the campaign took precedence...I'd say I'm still running a FR game even though the fictional history would very likely by now be so widely divergent as to be almost unrecognizable.

Someone who started a campaign using the 3e FR sourcebook and then let things develop on their own is also just as much running a FR game.

In short: once the campaign starts, its own events trump and supercede anything "official". If a PC party manages to burn Neverwinter to the ground during a campaign and two months later an official supplement comes out detailing how Neverwinter has become a major military force all of a sudden, well guess what? Supplement ignored.

Lanefan

 

[Davelozzi]

What I dislike about Forgotten Realms is that every edition there's a cataclysm or upheaval to canonically explain with lore the change in mechanics, and even when there isn't, they still overhaul the entire campaign setting. It feels like the rug gets pulled out from under you constantly. Deities don't feel eternal. They feel like soap opera characters. Lore doesn't feel consistent. It feels designed by committee. The physical laws of the world seemingly change with the wind. They reinvent the campaign setting every time the rulebooks change. It makes it feel like the game rules dictate the events of the campaign setting, rather than the campaign setting being a fictional world that players and DMs get to explore using whatever game rules they like and making their own stories with it. It feels like the tail is wagging the dog. It's WotC saying, "We changed the game rules, so you must update your campaign setting."

I do agree that this is super annoying. I would think by now they would have realized that explaining the rules changes with a Realms Shaking Event is wholly unnecessary and does way more harm than good in the eyes of the fanbase. Some of the talk about the Second Sundering being the last big such event makes it seem like maybe they finally did, and that they just needed that last one to bring things back to where they wanted them, so there is some cause for hope, but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed when 6e finally does roll around.

Let's say I make a Middle Earth campaign setting for my role playing game set during the Third Age. Then I change the mechanical rules of my game for a second edition. I include a cataclysmic event called the "Dragonbirth" and now there's dragons all over Middle Earth. Rivendell has been burned to the ground, and much of Mirkwood and Fanghorn was destroyed. Would you be interested in running every future campaign in this Middle Earth, knowing that all content produced in the future from adventures to new revisions of the campaign setting would never go back to the time of Mordor and the Ring of the books?

I'm with you there, and again that's why I am happy that the 5e Realms is at least a return in spirit to the early days of the setting, even if the in-game history to get us there has been a lot messier than a clean reboot probably would have been.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yeah, but the problem is, none of those books are entirely compatible with each other.
[...]
Bottom line is that consistency, not variety, is key to forming a campaign setting with memorable lore, and it's memorable lore that makes a setting worth playing.

The one nice thing that I have to say about Forgotten Realms is that it is the only setting that has stayed consistent over the editions, because it incorporates edition changes into the setting itself. The reality of the Forgotten Realms consistently reflects the rules of the edition at that point in history.

I once played a level 1 character in a 4E campaign that had been level 20 for decades of in-game time, but who had suffered from level drain at some point between the Time of Troubles and the Spellplague. Permanent level drain wasn't part of 4E, but it was part of how the world worked at the time it happened. If a 5E character gets sent backward in time, they will wind up in a world that is literally operating under different natural laws. It opens up a lot of possibilities that don't make sense in other settings, where they pretend that reality has been fundamentally similar all throughout history.

 

[Bacon Bits]

The one nice thing that I have to say about Forgotten Realms is that it is the only setting that has stayed consistent over the editions, because it incorporates edition changes into the setting itself. The reality of the Forgotten Realms consistently reflects the rules of the edition at that point in history.

And in maintaining consistency with the rules, it sacrifices consistency of lore. And then pretends it doesn't do that by inventing cataclysms. It's very poor storytelling.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And in maintaining consistency with the rules, it sacrifices consistency of lore. And then pretends it doesn't do that by inventing cataclysms. It's very poor storytelling.

No, you have that backwards. The lore of the Realms is fairly consistent, because it has in-game events which explain any discrepancies. It might seem like a HandWave, but in a world with literal gods and god-level wizards, you don't really need to justify it beyond saying that AWizardDidIt.

To contrast, something like Greyhawk is wildly inconsistent, because it doesn't even acknowledge how the reality of the game world changes based on the ruleset you're using. It's asking you to pretend that those inconsistencies aren't there, when they clearly exist for everyone to see. A flimsy explanation is better than no explanation whatsoever. A DeusExMachina is preferable to an outright Retcon.

 

[Mercule]

Worse, what happens when DM knows 1e FR, player 1 knows 2e FR, player 2 knows 3e FR, etc. It's a vipers nest of mixed continuity and nobody is looking at the campaign world the same. We're all sitting at the same game table in the same campaign, but somehow we're not actually playing in the same campaign setting anymore.

This. In fairness, it's really a problem for any campaign setting that advances a metaplot. The WoD and Shadowrun also suffer from this, as do many settings based on a work of fiction. But... we're talking about the Realms.

I have a player in my group. I think he started playing in the 3E days, and he's a fan of the Realms. I assume he likes the 3E version with all the detail, but I guess I've never really asked. When the SCAG came out, I made a comment about it note looking too bad and being "just enough" campaign material for me to work with. He kinda jumped on that. I quickly determined that there was no way that I was willing to go back and try to read the copious source books from previous editions -- and there was no way I was subjecting myself to the novels. I also knew that he was pretty darn familiar with the setting and could easily run rings around me, even if he wasn't a "super fan". So, I told him that, if I even considered it, the only canon would be SCAG, no other source would count, and that I'd be perfectly comfortable filling in details or expanding the map however I saw fit. I might look at a previous edition map or source book but, more than likely, I'd generally ignore it and definitely change things I knew about and disliked.

I believe the response was, "Eberron it is, sir."

Now, I didn't do that to be a jerk. I'm at a point in life where I have three teenagers and one hurtling towards it way too fast. I work a full-time+ job with more responsibility than is probably healthy. I'm totally good with beer-and-pretzels and go. In general, I just like things that speed play -- and I'm willing and able to pay for them. I really would consider using SCAG as my setting. I don't want all the baggage that comes with it, though. I want a primer, not a college textbook (or series).

 

[Mercule]

To contrast, something like Greyhawk is wildly inconsistent, because it doesn't even acknowledge how the reality of the game world changes based on the ruleset you're using. It's asking you to pretend that those inconsistencies aren't there, when they clearly exist for everyone to see. A flimsy explanation is better than no explanation whatsoever. A DeusExMachina is preferable to an outright Retcon.

Greyhawk doesn't need to explain them because Greyhawk isn't really concerned with a moving timeline. There's history, but it's got all the reliability that history has. What Greyhawk cares about is how hard is that next tomb going to be to loot, and how much money is in it?

Which isn't to diminish your point. I'm well past the point where I think Greyhawk should be left alone. I'd take a rules-less setting book, but just to get a clean (and prettier) version of what was in the 1983 set in a hardcover.

One thing that did recently occur to me is that, with the new DnD Beyond tool, I assume this means wikis and that you'll be able to pick up all the fluff of the SCAG, not just the crunch, because it's a 5E product. I'm happy for the Realms fans. As an Eberron fan who is starting to find the tool attractive, I'd really like to be able to leave all my books at home. Without any 5E support for Eberron, that's not happening.

So, I know have another reason to be irritable about the monopoly of the Realms. I'm hoping there's at least a bridge for stuff in the DMs Guild and that they open up more settings.

 

[prosfilaes]

I've found that it's pretty easy to change the plot threads to match any changes that have happened. I've also found that those issues you mentioned about assumptions vanish with a simple sentence to the players. "I run the Forgotten Realms up through the Time of Troubles, but some things are different.". *POOF* The assumptions vanish since they are aware that what they ordinarily assume may not be true. They actually go out of their way to try to find the changes and enjoy them when they come.

And I've found that not to be true, that players take the basic assumptions pretty deeply and I find myself midgame trying to fix things too often for my taste.

The answer is not that they are PCs. The answer is that Elminster is busy countering Fzoul. The Simbul has her hands full with Thay. And so on. These NPCs are busy with their own plots and the PCs are the only ones that can handle this plot. If they fail, the world ends for them AND those NPCs. Nobody is going to come in at the last moment to save them and the world if they are about to fail.

That simply doesn't work with the climax of the Zeitgeist Adventure Path or the original Dragonlance adventures. Hitting the Organizations chapter of the FRCS, I find over a dozen 21+ level characters; the Thay have means and motive to stop any truly world-ending scenario that can be taken on by a non-epic level party, and the Simbul is probably going to go along instead of letting the world end.

 

[prosfilaes]

how the reality of the game world changes based on the ruleset you're using

Has HBO's Game of Thrones been wildly inconsistent because they've been ignoring how the reality of the world changes as each new RPG with a wildly different rules set? I believe Ed Greenwood said about 3rd Edition FR that the rules changed but the world didn't, that characters that now had levels in sorcerer were just better modeled in 3E with levels in sorcerer. I'm sure in our visions of Greyhawk, we don't see weapon strikes doing fixed quantized amounts of damage, or people having fixed quantized amounts of fighting ability. Maybe 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E and 5E are just simply different gamable approximations to an underlying world.

 

[Cleon]

Yes. CSotIO is just the main city and not much else. CSotWE, which came later, kinda waves at the city but then goes on to cover much more area around it...and it's the area around it, with all the small towns and villages and adventure hooks, which makes it worthwhile.

Sorry for butting in, but this is inaccurate.

The City State of the Invincible Overlord (1976) and City State of the World Emperor (1980) are two different city states in Judges' Guild original 'AD&D compatible' Wilderlands of High Fantasy campaign setting.

Technically, neither of them is a true "city state" since both are the capital of an empire. Judges Guild did cover the area around the CSotIO but it was in separately published products, the CSotWE had everything in one package.

Judges Guild also published a third one - the City State of Tarantis (1983).

I happen to have all three, so I ought to know!

Don't conflate those fish-walloping green degenerates of the Viridistan World Emperor with the glorious citizens of the Overlord!