D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[prosfilaes]

Canon's decided at the table. Anyone can play in any setting with as little or as much info as they have or like. Sure, certain settings may not appeal to someone based on asthetic reasons or personal taste. I can understand that. I just fon't think this "abundance of info" thing is really a problem, or that NPCs are really a problem.

One post above said that a player literally rejected playing in the Forgotten Realms if the poster was only interested in running with a limited canon. You can choose not to listen to us about things we find problematic with FR all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that we find them problematic.

 

[Selvarin]

One post above said that a player literally rejected playing in the Forgotten Realms if the poster was only interested in running with a limited canon. You can choose not to listen to us about things we find problematic with FR all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that we find them problematic.

The problem, then, is with that player.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So then it's not really about the Realms then, is it?

Well.

Yes and No.


I am currently a player in two separate games that use the Realms map (they alternate hiatuses).

I would not call either of them games that use the Forgotten Realms setting though. For example, in one of them we started a mercenary company in Waterdeep. There are no masked Lords, there is only one noble house we are aware of (though it is implied there are more) there is a single inn, the guards are useless, stupid and lazy. There is a cave less than a days walk from the city, an abandoned church a bit further out.

Now, some of this may be accurate, some may not, but for the purposes of our campaign this city could be called Pittsburg and it wouldn't matter.

To me, this means it is not a Forgotten Realms game. I've tied my character to the Kingdom of the Many Arrows orcs, but most everyone else is either generic or homebrew and their backstories could take place any where.

If it is only the map we use, then it can't be the realms, because it is only place holder names. And digging more into the lore and actually making use of it is an amount of effort that this table is not going to make.

For a lot of people, this is what it means to play a Forgotten Realms game. Pull up a map and make everything else up, but for me, that isn't enough to be using the setting. And for all the effort I'd need to put into using that setting, I could just make my own. My players won't care because the setting never seems to matter to the vast majority of them, and I'm doing a whole lot less of guessing what the true answers are and how certain characters are supposed to act. These are my characters and my questions, so my answers are completely right.

 

[guachi]

I've seen a few people actually mention specific locales they enjoy but mostly the FR love boils down to: The Forgotten Realms is great! Look at all this stuff I get to ignore!

For me, a setting is worthwhile if 2/3 of the stuff is decent. For example, the baseline of Mystara is 14 Gazetteers and a boxed set produced from 1987 to (I think) 1990. Of those, one is poor enough for me to say "don't bother with" - the Ierendi Gazetteer.

I like all the 10 or so products for al-Qadim (because boxed sets are cool!)

What's the hit to miss ratio for Forgotten Realms?

 

[hawkeyefan]

One post above said that a player literally rejected playing in the Forgotten Realms if the poster was only interested in running with a limited canon. You can choose not to listen to us about things we find problematic with FR all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that we find them problematic.

There are reasons I can understand somone not liking a setting. I am not a big fan of Spelljammer. I never really took to Ebberon. I don't hate those settings, and I'm sure there are aspects that I would or could like about them, but they're just not my cup of tea.

I just think that many folks who are saying that they don't like the Realms are actually complaining about something else. In the case you cited, as [MENTION=6102]Selvarin[/MENTION] already pointed out, the problem was the player being unwilling to play in the game proposed. Or perhaps we could say that the problem was about mismatched expectations or desires within the gaming group. All players in a game should have expectations that are along the same lines.

But certainly the scenario you describe isn't unique to the Forgotten Realms.

Well.

Yes and No.


I am currently a player in two separate games that use the Realms map (they alternate hiatuses).

I would not call either of them games that use the Forgotten Realms setting though. For example, in one of them we started a mercenary company in Waterdeep. There are no masked Lords, there is only one noble house we are aware of (though it is implied there are more) there is a single inn, the guards are useless, stupid and lazy. There is a cave less than a days walk from the city, an abandoned church a bit further out.

Now, some of this may be accurate, some may not, but for the purposes of our campaign this city could be called Pittsburg and it wouldn't matter.

To me, this means it is not a Forgotten Realms game. I've tied my character to the Kingdom of the Many Arrows orcs, but most everyone else is either generic or homebrew and their backstories could take place any where.

If it is only the map we use, then it can't be the realms, because it is only place holder names. And digging more into the lore and actually making use of it is an amount of effort that this table is not going to make.

For a lot of people, this is what it means to play a Forgotten Realms game. Pull up a map and make everything else up, but for me, that isn't enough to be using the setting. And for all the effort I'd need to put into using that setting, I could just make my own. My players won't care because the setting never seems to matter to the vast majority of them, and I'm doing a whole lot less of guessing what the true answers are and how certain characters are supposed to act. These are my characters and my questions, so my answers are completely right.

Sure. There are degrees to which the material is used. I'd say a map, some locations, world elements or organizations is enough to say you're playing a Realms based game. You consider it something a bit different, and that's fine. Others would have differing definitions, and everyone would be right, as you say. It's a matter of semantics.

But this is my point...you or your DM (or both, it sounds like) drew inspiration from the material. And that's really all any setting content is meant to do. To inspire gamers for their home game, whatever it may be. Something about the Kingdom of Many Arrows interested you, so you used it. Parts of Waterdeep interested your DM, so he based things there. Even if all that interested him was the time it saved him having to make a map and some names up himself.

So to me, a lot of people who claim to hate the Realms seem to be more upset by some perceived need to remain utterly faithful to the source material instead of simply using it as an inspiration for their game.

 

[dagger]

Well.



For a lot of people, this is what it means to play a Forgotten Realms game. Pull up a map and make everything else up, but for me, that isn't enough to be using the setting. And for all the effort I'd need to put into using that setting, I could just make my own. My players won't care because the setting never seems to matter to the vast majority of them, and I'm doing a whole lot less of guessing what the true answers are and how certain characters are supposed to act. These are my characters and my questions, so my answers are completely right.

And yet I have never found a need to make sure a character is acting the way its supposed to act. If I want to have eliminster be a drunken rapist, I will. We wont care either, and yet, its still the Realms.

 

[Hussar]

So then it's not really about the Realms then, is it?



Need?

I'm sure there are some die hards out there that absolutely think they need an explanation like that from Greenwood himself. But no one actually needs that. It has literally never come up in my campaign. This is my point...you take ad much or as little as you like.

I believe that you've played Dragonlance, right? I remember a thread about Canon and discussion about a gnomish wild mage and if that was "in canon" for the setting. Now, my knowledge of Dragonlance pretty much ends after the "Legends" trilogy, which I read when they came out or shortly thereafter as a kid.

Am I not able to play in the setting? Must I buy sourcebooks or novels about the War of Souls and whatever else followed? Is it not possible for me to have the PCs in my game replace the Companions? Or to have them doing something else entirely?

Canon's decided at the table. Anyone can play in any setting with as little or as much info as they have or like. Sure, certain settings may not appeal to someone based on asthetic reasons or personal taste. I can understand that. I just fon't think this "abundance of info" thing is really a problem, or that NPCs are really a problem.

Despite the fact that I'm telling you specifically that "abundance of info" is a problem? Or others are specifically telling you that the abundance of high level NPC's is a problem? Do you think that we're lying to you? Or somehow deluded? We're telling you, specifically, what we don't like about the setting. Instead of telling me that I'm wrong, perhaps you could simply accept that I know what I like and don't like.

As far as running Dragonlance, I'd say yes, it would be impossible for you to run a post War of the Lance DL game without buying at least a few supplements. Well, you could run a campaign, post WotL, but, it would be 100% home-brew.

Like the example you gave. A gnome wild mage IS canon post War of the Lance. They made changes (and some pretty spectacularly big ones like making Draconians a playable race) to the setting and, without access to that information, your campaign isn't going to be a home-brew game set in Ansalon. It would be unrecognizable as Dragonlance to anyone who actually followed the canon.

And, again, I'd point out that to run a post War of the Lance game, you'd need, about, two books. Maybe 3. Because that's all there is. Not counting novels of course. But, we're talking about being able to buy 100% of the setting material. Very easily accomplished. Buying even a fraction of the material produced for FR is a major undertaking.

 

[cbwjm]

Despite the fact that I'm telling you specifically that "abundance of info" is a problem? Or others are specifically telling you that the abundance of high level NPC's is a problem? Do you think that we're lying to you? Or somehow deluded? We're telling you, specifically, what we don't like about the setting. Instead of telling me that I'm wrong, perhaps you could simply accept that I know what I like and don't like.

As far as running Dragonlance, I'd say yes, it would be impossible for you to run a post War of the Lance DL game without buying at least a few supplements. Well, you could run a campaign, post WotL, but, it would be 100% home-brew.

Like the example you gave. A gnome wild mage IS canon post War of the Lance. They made changes (and some pretty spectacularly big ones like making Draconians a playable race) to the setting and, without access to that information, your campaign isn't going to be a home-brew game set in Ansalon. It would be unrecognizable as Dragonlance to anyone who actually followed the canon.

And, again, I'd point out that to run a post War of the Lance game, you'd need, about, two books. Maybe 3. Because that's all there is. Not counting novels of course. But, we're talking about being able to buy 100% of the setting material. Very easily accomplished. Buying even a fraction of the material produced for FR is a major undertaking.

I think part of what some people might disagree with is that you need all of this canon material otherwise it isn't the setting. For dragonlance, if all you have is the 2nd edition boxed set and you adventure through the war of the lance, you can keep going there is no reason that you need any of the material that comes after. It still uses the world, the people and places, it isn't homebrew, it's dragonlance. I've seen people on forums say that they ignored the time of troubles and just kept playing with the 1e version of the realms, there game is no less the forgotten realms than someone's game that is set in the 4th edition realms.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Despite the fact that I'm telling you specifically that "abundance of info" is a problem? Or others are specifically telling you that the abundance of high level NPC's is a problem? Do you think that we're lying to you? Or somehow deluded? We're telling you, specifically, what we don't like about the setting. Instead of telling me that I'm wrong, perhaps you could simply accept that I know what I like and don't like.

No, I don't think you are lying or deluded. Nothing so dramatic as that. Just that perhaps folks aren't always sure of the reasons thay may like or dislike something. And sometimes it's interesting to discuss to see if a greater understanding can be attained.

As far as running Dragonlance, I'd say yes, it would be impossible for you to run a post War of the Lance DL game without buying at least a few supplements. Well, you could run a campaign, post WotL, but, it would be 100% home-brew.

Like the example you gave. A gnome wild mage IS canon post War of the Lance. They made changes (and some pretty spectacularly big ones like making Draconians a playable race) to the setting and, without access to that information, your campaign isn't going to be a home-brew game set in Ansalon. It would be unrecognizable as Dragonlance to anyone who actually followed the canon.

And, again, I'd point out that to run a post War of the Lance game, you'd need, about, two books. Maybe 3. Because that's all there is. Not counting novels of course. But, we're talking about being able to buy 100% of the setting material. Very easily accomplished. Buying even a fraction of the material produced for FR is a major undertaking.

Well, I wasn't talking about running a post-War of the Lance game specifically. Just a Dragonlance Game. To me that means War of the Lance. So I wouldn't need any other products to play Dragonlance beyond the ones with which I'm already familiar.

Anything after the War of the Lance is pretty much garbage anyway and can't be fun.

 

[prosfilaes]

I just think that many folks who are saying that they don't like the Realms are actually complaining about something else. In the case you cited, as [MENTION=6102]Selvarin[/MENTION] already pointed out, the problem was the player being unwilling to play in the game proposed.

Selvarin said just "the player" is the problem. I find your argument more persuasive yet more of a non sequitur. Players being unwilling to play in a setting is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a setting. And if players don't want to play in FR because they're deeply familiar with it and would prefer not to play in a version of it that doesn't match their conception of it, that's a perfectly valid reason for them.

No, I don't think you are lying or deluded. Nothing so dramatic as that. Just that perhaps folks aren't always sure of the reasons thay may like or dislike something. And sometimes it's interesting to discuss to see if a greater understanding can be attained.

The reason why you like the Forgotten Realms is because you own a lot of Forgotten Realms and therefore you must like it, else spending all that money on it would be a mistake, and people don't like to believe they made mistakes. That's real psychology and is certainly a factor to some minor extent in many cases, but it doesn't do the conversation any good to ignore what you're saying and insist on that. Generally greater understanding is not reached by dismissing the opinions of other people and telling them "that can't be the real reason, because that's not a problem."