D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[Caliban]

Yet FR novels are canon

Nope. The novels were tacked on after the setting was created. They are written by novelists, not by the campaign creators.

It would be different if the campaign was created based on the novels, but it wasn't.

Some of the events in the novels are folded into the campaign timeline when it is advanced, but that's about it.

Edit - Or to put it another way - if they are canon, they became canon AFTER I stopped running my own campaigns in the Realms. So they were never part of the canon I was using. But unless it is mentioned in a setting book or supplement, I really don't consider it canon. You may be different, if you have a shelf full of FR novels.

Whatever FR campaign we are running is unimportant to FR canon

And that's just plain nonsense.

Either Crown of Fire (1994) or Hand of Fire (2002). But it's not as if not every Elminster novel or novel just featuring Elminster has such nonsense

So a few years after the campaign I was running, if it was 2002. In either case, I never read either novel. Are you honestly trying to tell me that a novel that I never read, published years after the game I was running, should have been taken into consideration when deciding how to use Realms NPC's in my own game?

In any case...this is all really beside the point. The way I chose to use the Realms NPC's in my game was to ...Not have them show up. That's it.

Telling me that I was somehow "doing it wrong" because the Realm's NPC's (Elminster in particular) didn't show up and interfere with the PC's is just silly, regardless of what you think the "canon" Elminster would be doing. Even if later novels turned him into a mockery of the original Elminster.

 

[Mirtek]

Nope.

Yes they are. That's one of their big selling points.

The novels were tacked on after the setting was created. They are written by novelists, not by the campaign creators.

It would be different if the campaign was created based on the novels, but it wasn't.

Doesn't matter. FR novels are canon. That's one of the things to love about the FR as a game setting.

I never even bothered with Eberron novels for the very reason that those were explicitly declared to not be canon.

Some of the events in the novels are folded into the campaign timeline when it is advanced, but that's about it.

Nope. Game supplements and novels are equally canon and equally start changes or pick up on changes started by the other.

Edit - Or to put it another way - if they are canon, they became canon AFTER I stopped running my own campaigns in the Realms.

Since they have been canon from the very first novel, I take it you stopped in 1987?

So they were never part of the canon I was using.

Everyone is free to use only as much or little of canon for his homegame as he likes.

But unless it is mentioned in a setting book or supplement, I really don't consider it canon.

It doesn't matter what you or I consider, canon is whatever the IP owner declares to be. For FR novels were included as part of the canon from day one. Both by TSR and by WotC.

That's one of the quirks of FR you can either love or hate.

 

[KahlessNestor]

So you come onto a thread about "Why FR is hated" and when people say it's because of how the high-level NPCs are portrayed in the books and how they think they would logically behave in the games, you tell them they're all wrong, and they're the one's breaking basic gaming etiquette. Shouldn't the right to dislike a setting without being told how wrong you are be a part of basic gaming etiquette? And if you think that limits conversation too much, I think you're going to have to tolerate people telling you the way you're running FR is not the way the books describe it.

They were told that they were wrong because they claimed that such NPCs were busybodies butting their noses into everyone's business. Others told them no, that isn't how they are portrayed, so if you are playing them that way -- and you care about faithful characterization (which why you would claim that if you hate FR anyway) -- then you are "playing it wrong". The first claimant then even admutted to not reading the sources in which the characters are actually characterized!

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[Caliban]

*shrug* Oh whatever. Apparently my fond memories of the Realms are only that way because I didn't keep up with the novels and the Internet wasn't there to tell me how wrong I was.

Thanks for taking care of that for me Mirtek. Now I know I really don't care about "canon" FR if it has to include novels I've never read or cared about. Yay!

 

[JeffB]

I think Darkwalker on Moonshae actually preceded any game material. Novels were canon before the OGB..

Just to throw another Aganazar's Scorcher at the fire

 

[cbwjm]

It's been a while but I can't recall Elminster or the Simbul or any of the 7 sisters really making much of an appearance in most of the FR novels I've read. Where they did, the books were about them. I recall the first Baldurs Gate game had a brief run in with him but it was pretty incidental, he didn't do anything and he had no impact on the game.

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[Remathilis]

I guess I was taught something different. PCs are special and the only ones with levels.

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Interesting. Where do liches come from?

 

[Demetrios1453]

It's been a while but I can't recall Elminster or the Simbul or any of the 7 sisters really making much of an appearance in most of the FR novels I've read. Where they did, the books were about them. I recall the first Baldurs Gate game had a brief run in with him but it was pretty incidental, he didn't do anything and he had no impact on the game.

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I can only assume, based on arguments made by some in this thread, that those many, many FR authors benighted enough to fail to have Elminster, Drizzt, and so on meddle intimately and continuously in their novels' plots aren't properly writing for the setting. I can only hope that the posters making such arguments are already writing strongly-worded letters to each and every one of them, laying out in extensive detail just how they were completely and utterly unfaithful to the very foundations the setting...

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[KahlessNestor]

Interesting. Where do liches come from?

Well, when a mommy lich and a daddy lich love each other very much...[emoji6]

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[Maxperson]

Mordenkainen hangs out with some gnomes far away from the cities and isn't particularly active in game supplements. His name is everywhere but that's about it.

Mordenkainen was involved in at least two modules that I know of, and he met with Elminster and Dalamar to discuss the three worlds and trade spells. And Elminster isn't very active, either. His name is just everywhere. He works behind the scenes when he works at all. Mostly he hangs out smoking and being a sage.