Spelljammer The Forgotten Realms eats Spelljammer before it even finishes digesting Radiant Citadel!

[Hussar]

Because cities on coasts are uncommon...? And the book already does all of that work for the DM in Greyhawk, Eberron, and even Exandra, it's not like the book makes use of FR geography except in broad strokes. There are no keyed regional maps or encounters.

I’m going to disagree here. The module leans hard on FR. Off the top of my head

1. The temple of Ohgma is run by a Shou man.
2. Harpers hire the party in Curious Tale of Wisteria Vale.
3. The Yuan-ti in the Grippli adventure (whose name I totally forget) are very closely tied to FR.
4. Lore of Larue is 100% FR.
5. Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor is plonked into Waterdeep
6. Price of Beauty is tied straight into FR.

Could you rewrite these to put them in a different setting? Sure. Of course you can. But it’s not really a stretch to say that CM is meant to be played in Forgotten Realms.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m going to disagree here. The module leans hard on FR. Off the top of my head

1. The temple of Ohgma is run by a Shou man.
2. Harpers hire the party in Curious Tale of Wisteria Vale.
3. The Yuan-ti in the Grippli adventure (whose name I totally forget) are very closely tied to FR.
4. Lore of Larue is 100% FR.
5. Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor is plonked into Waterdeep
6. Price of Beauty is tied straight into FR.

Could you rewrite these to put them in a different setting? Sure. Of course you can. But it’s not really a stretch to say that CM is meant to be played in Forgotten Realms.

The same way that Yawning Portal is for Greyhawk (they didn't scrub the references, and even detail how to use the Green Drsgon Inn for the socalled "frame" of the campaign!), sure. The Grippli adventure was actually edited largely.to remove the specific FR lore (and space), because the writer went too far into the Lore weeds and it's a generic book (per Chris Perkins on Dragon Talk just before that exploded).

 

[Hussar]

TotYP is a different animal. Those adventures are all generic and setting agnostic. Or at least mostly anyway. Really they’re a mixed bag. Dead in Thay is certainly an FR adventure but Tomb of Horrors is iconically Greyhawk.

I’d say that TotYP is pretty setting agnostic.
But in any case, it’s again not unreasonable to say that 5e has made the Sword Coast the default setting.

 

[Parmandur]

TotYP is a different animal. Those adventures are all generic and setting agnostic. Or at least mostly anyway. Really they’re a mixed bag. Dead in Thay is certainly an FR adventure but Tomb of Horrors is iconically Greyhawk.

I’d say that TotYP is pretty setting agnostic.
But in any case, it’s again not unreasonable to say that 5e has made the Sword Coast the default setting.

The default Setting is homebrew that triangulation between Hreyhawk and the Forgotten Realms while reviving 2E metasetting elements. Or, in corporate lingo, "the default setting for 5E is the D&D multiverse."

 

[Hussar]

The default Setting is homebrew that triangulation between Hreyhawk and the Forgotten Realms while reviving 2E metasetting elements. Or, in corporate lingo, "the default setting for 5E is the D&D multiverse."

They can claim that until they’re blue in the face but when 3/4 of the material they produce is tethered specifically to Forgotten Realms it doesn’t mean much.

 

[Parmandur]

They can claim that until they’re blue in the face but when 3/4 of the material they produce is tethered specifically to Forgotten Realms it doesn’t mean much.

"Tethered" is a very strong term. The Sword Coast is specifically an area of the FR that is extra generic, and anything there is easy to port to Greyhawk or a random D&D themed world.

 

[Scribe]

It doesn't do you much good to say "there is only one Orcus in the multiverse", when each individual DM campaign might have their own Orcus (or none at all!)

Our games are not canon. Never have been.

There used to be a canon.

 

[Hussar]

"Tethered" is a very strong term. The Sword Coast is specifically an area of the FR that is extra generic, and anything there is easy to port to Greyhawk or a random D&D themed world.

Kinda sorta? Again, porting from FR to Greyhawk isn't typically all that difficult because so much of Forgotten Realms is borrowed from Greyhawk. The races, the classes, most of the mechanics and virtually all the monster lore, at least from anything published before 1990, is pulled pretty much verbatim from Greyhawk to FR.

As far as porting it into a "random D&D themed world", well, so long as that world is mostly generic D&D, then sure. Trying to port into my current home-brew would be right out the window. Or, even porting into my Scarred Lands or Primeval Thule campaigns would be a LOT of work. As in I'd have to more or less rewrite the entire adventures from the ground up and would likely only be using the odd stat block and that would be about it.

I mean, heck, let's see you run Candlekeep in Mystara. There's just a mountain of work you'd have to do to make it work.

 

[Parmandur]

Kinda sorta? Again, porting from FR to Greyhawk isn't typically all that difficult because so much of Forgotten Realms is borrowed from Greyhawk. The races, the classes, most of the mechanics and virtually all the monster lore, at least from anything published before 1990, is pulled pretty much verbatim from Greyhawk to FR.

As far as porting it into a "random D&D themed world", well, so long as that world is mostly generic D&D, then sure. Trying to port into my current home-brew would be right out the window. Or, even porting into my Scarred Lands or Primeval Thule campaigns would be a LOT of work. As in I'd have to more or less rewrite the entire adventures from the ground up and would likely only be using the odd stat block and that would be about it.

I mean, heck, let's see you run Candlekeep in Mystara. There's just a mountain of work you'd have to do to make it work.

Per Chris Perkins "homebrew that looks a lot like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk" describes the largest chunk of players experience.

 

[Maxperson]

Forgotten Realms gods are in Planescape.

Planescape is part of Forgotten Realms.

Forgotten Realms is part of Planescape.

Forgotten Realms = Planescape.

There's some seriously faulty logic there. I mean...

Americans are in Russia. Russians are in America. America = Russia. That uses the same logic and is obviously untrue, just like Forgotten Realms = Planescape.