D&D General Forgotten Realms - why do you still like running games here? +

[Parmandur]

It’s twice as far it is from London to Paris and they are quite culturally distinct too.

Yup: Ontario, though diverse (and Greenwood's home of Toronto is particularly cosmopolitan), is very British in cultural roots (indeed, being a constitutional monarchy under King Charles), whereas Wisconsin has a higher percentage of people being of Polish descent than English (also, a higher Hispanic proportion than English) and is very, very German.

 

[haakon1]

So what’s particularly Canadian/English about FR?

Swiss-German Gygax did put cantons in Perrenland and does have Palatine states, but no direct equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire, electors, or the Hanseatic League. (One could argue the GK is like the HRE or Iron League is like the Hanseatic League, but it’s a stretch.)

 

[Seramus]

You can put a + spin on the high level NPCs! It makes some campaigns hilarious when seen through that lens.

Like, take Tomb of Annihilation. There is no way the FR liches are going to tolerate Acererak succeeding, so him failing becomes a foregone conclusion. So you're the barely coordinated comedic B-Team sent in as an insult.

And they were right! The B-Team is all it took to topple his plan.

 

[GrimCo]

1. Why

Cause i play with group that knows FR very well and like it, plus, it can accommodate various sub settings ( far east, mesoamerica, Renaissance, ancient Egypt ) without me doing lot's of world building.

2. How do you approach the setting (everything is in, stick to one edition, gray box only etc.)?

Pick a region based on the theme and go for it. I use 3ed FR Campaign setting guide.

3. How long has it been your campaign setting of choice?

It's not my first pick, but we have been using it on and off from 2005-6.

4. What are your favorite game supplements?

Campaign setting guide and Lost empires of Faerun

5. Do you like any of the novels? Which ones? And do you use the novels for game material?

Yup. Read bunch of them. Original Drizzt trilogy, all the ones about Artemis Entreri, Elminster ones. Nope, don't use them for game material.

 

[Cergorach]

Let me start by pointing out that I thoroughly dislike the time jumps and the global disasters of 4e and subsequently 5e. I like 1e/2e/3e FR, but still run 5e FR in our current campaign

1. Why
Well... I could go with the basic answer of standard high fantasy world that's currently supported well and Nostalgia. And that's partially true, but I suspect the answer lies deeper. We started way back in AD&D2e, I remember back in 'high school' that I was making my own world maps and our own world, in the 90s I was buying what I could (afford) of 2e, every setting, every supplement. We did do some trips to Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc. But we used our 'own' world (which was a D4 sided world, one of the sides was Dark Sun). We kinda stopped playing AD&D2e at the end of the 90s, we made trips into Vampire, Shadowrun, board games, card games, etc.

By the time Eric Noah started collecting the 3e rumours, I started planning a return to D&D3e. By that time I had a fulltime job, just like the rest of the group, so time was a LOT more limited. Over the years I had collected most of the FR products physically, but had all of the pdfs (the official ones), I had also the FR digital Atlas, Dragon Archive, and made a pdf index file for all the FR pdfs/products (which was a LOT). So this was the most fleshed out setting I had complete (digital) access to. There was also a TON of fanmade material, there was quite a bit for Greyhawk as well, but as we all had read quite a bit of the FR novels, played the FR computer games (especially Eye of the Beholder in our group), I settled on FR for proto-3e. And used the fanmade Northern Journey project as our campaign, as I was already spending enough time stringing together 3e and 3e monster conversions.

D&D 3e brought us a pletora of good FR supplements, we continued playing in FR during our 3e period, most of us bought evert FR product and we are all very familiar with it. We skipped 4e completely, and we started 5e for a short while, then quit a couple of years and got back to it a few years ago. One of our group was DMing and we started in close to Thay, our next DM moved us to Neverwinter with the same party. When it was my turn to DM, we started a new 1st level party, I had a few campaign options available, one of them was the alpha version of Foundry VTT Ember (setting/campaign/sandbox), the other was in FR Undermountain, we opted for the later. My idea for that didn't start out as FR Undermountain, but as a mega dungeon I fully made, but I still have a fulltime job that is even more demanding then 25+ years ago, buying a house, having to run it in a VTT, I started looking at existing mega dungeons, like Rappan Athuk, etc. But eventually settled on Undermountain by way of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

So why exactly FR? Because we're all very familiar with the setting, especially Waterdeep as it was our home base in 3e for years. Why introduce a new world people have to learn all over again when they have demanding day jobs and families. Some of the group have a strong dislike for digital books, so they would have to buy physical books, etc. There's also a huge pile of existing official and fanmade material to delve into. So partly it's a bit of nostalgia, but I suspect it's also very practical, atleast for me as a DM.

2. How do you approach the setting (everything is in, stick to one edition, gray box only etc.)?
As a group we decided eventually to stick to the FR 5e timeline, not my favorite choice. But due to the lack of deep 4e/5e material we still often reach into 3e and 1e/2e material, either for history or more practical for maps and more detailed situations that the 4e/5e material didn't touch all that well or deep.

From my particular use, the Undermountain of 5e Dungeon of the Mad Mage is very limited compared to the 2e boxed sets... So I can easily use the maps from 2e for expanding the map, possibly using things from those earlier editions, sometimes with modifications for our particular adventure.

3. How long has it been your campaign setting of choice?
25+ years

4. What are your favorite game supplements?
I think I used the 3e FR core book the most, is that also my favorite? I don't know, I really like a lot of the 2e boxed sets as well. It really depends on what part we're playing in FR.

5. Do you like any of the novels? Which ones? And do you use the novels for game material?
I read a bunch of them back in the day (I would say pre 3e) when my choices were more limited in English fanatsy/sci-fi material. Which ones specifically, I honestly don't remember, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if all of the pre 3e (or 1e/2e) novels...

Did I use it as game material. Not really directly, more to get a feel for what FR was like, big events, possibly NPCs they could meet if appropriate. But often more as inspiration, I would often first delve into the actual FR game books, before actually using them.

 

[Parmandur]

So what’s particularly Canadian/English about FR?

So, tge real core parts of the Forgotten Realms ste Waterdeep and the Dalelands, the locations of Greenwood's two longstanding home campaigns.

The Dalelands are a rugged undeveloped frontier populsted by independent yet vommunally minded democratic Yeomen farmers & woodsmen whose top leaders are essentially Robin Hoid and Merlin from T. H. White.

Waterdeep is Toronto with magic and s vast megadungeon. As opposed to Greyhawk being Chicago with a vast megadungeon (slight twist, Lake Geneva is in the suburban ambitious of Chicago and Gygax lived and worked there quite a bit, even though that is not in Wisconsin).

Swiss-German Gygax did put cantons in Perrenland and does have Palatine states, but no direct equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire, electors, or the Hanseatic League. (One could argue the GK is like the HRE or Iron League is like the Hanseatic League, but it’s a stretch.)

It's more about vibe and attitude, outlook on the world: Greyhawk is a world with detailed wargame stats at the roots, a powdered about to explode filled with Realpolitick cynicism. The Forgotten Realms...doesn't have much Realpolitick, no wargame stats for anything, but lots of room for stories about found friendship and plucky dogoodery.

 

[haakon1]

Let me start

Very similar to why I prefer and stick with Greyhawk, except I started D&D with AD&D in 1982, and you started with 2e about a decade later.

The much more massive library of FR materials is one reason my curiosity about “what is everyone doing over there” hasn’t led me to get involved.

FR feels like one of those things like classical music or being a fine wine enthusiast where the barrier to entry is high. If you haven’t read 100 books on FR, you’re way behind.

Maybe that’s why WotC keeps resetting the setting, but I don’t think that helps - I view it as yet another barrier that there umpteen answers over decades of real life and centuries of game time to my initial question of: “hey what should I as DM know about Iriaebor, other than that it’s hard to spell?”

Long diversion:
The Iriaebor question came up because in my since 1998 email campaign (in Greyhawk, using 3.5e since 2003), a player decided he wanted to bow out, either temporarily or permanently.

We were in the Temple of Elemental Evil's Nodes (which are extraplanar) at the time, so I decided a good 3.5e solution was to have this character be hit with a Dismissal spell - back to his home plane, which is the Prime Material Plane.

I made up a table of which SETTING in the PMP he would end up on, including Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, the Known World, Nentir Vale, and more. I randomly rolled FR.

Using my newly acquired Gray Box (recommended by a newer player), I randomly rolled a page number and came up with Iriaebor. Reading up on it, I had questions, and I think my answer is there's an endless firehose of information about any place in FR, even though this one is kind of obscure.

What my other players know so far about where their missing Monk friend is: he's in a place that doesn't speak Common - the language of Greyhawk's Great Kingdom from their POV, but he has met elves and has no problem communicating with them in Elvish. Next time they check-in by Sending, he'll say he's traveling to a place called Candlekeep. He's a Monk and intellectual, so he'll be drawn there like a moth to the flame.

 

[haakon1]

It's more about vibe and attitude, outlook on the world: Greyhawk is a world with detailed wargame stats at the roots, a powdered about to explode filled with Realpolitick cynicism. The Forgotten Realms...doesn't have much Realpolitick, no wargame stats for anything, but lots of room for stories about found friendship and plucky dogoodery.

Yeah. From my POV, Greyhawk is a bunch of medieval kingdoms - and a few city states - always on the brink of war with each other. As one does in medieval times.

Whereas my uninformed impression of FR is that it's mostly about the City-States of the Sword Coast, which seem to me to be like Italian Renaissance City-States only surrounded by howling wilderness. I'm not clear on the political-economics of how they exist and who they trade with, but I'm assume "it's D&D who cares" is the usual answer on those issues.

As a meme says, the Sword Coast is the "Remembered Realms".

(I've tried to make sense of trade in Greyhawk, FYI, but it's admittedly hit-and-miss. Way too many places produce precious metal and gems, whereas there are no clear answers on other commodities. Given all the libraries written about FR, maybe someone HAS figured it all out for FR.)

 

[Voadam]

Greyhawk 1e had the following map for exports which are mostly valuables, not things like manufactured goods like weapons or raw materials like wood or iron

The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has a two full-page trade maps of the realms thing which seems a little more in-depth

I was never really into that scale of detail even when playing a merchant prince character so I only ever gave these things a cursory glance

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah. From my POV, Greyhawk is a bunch of medieval kingdoms - and a few city states - always on the brink of war with each other. As one does in medieval times.

Whereas my uninformed impression of FR is that it's mostly about the City-States of the Sword Coast, which seem to me to be like Italian Renaissance City-States only surrounded by howling wilderness. I'm not clear on the political-economics of how they exist and who they trade with, but I'm assume "it's D&D who cares" is the usual answer on those issues.

As a meme says, the Sword Coast is the "Remembered Realms".

(I've tried to make sense of trade in Greyhawk, FYI, but it's admittedly hit-and-miss. Way too many places produce precious metal and gems, whereas there are no clear answers on other commodities. Given all the libraries written about FR, maybe someone HAS figured it all out for FR.)

Ed Greenwood has put a weird amount of thought into trade routes, they go back to his home game and were in 1E products, much more detailed than Greyhawk was on that front.

The Sword Coast is pretty big (the Packfic coast of North America big), and the isolated city states that pepper it are pretty ideal D&D home bases, so they do get a lot of the attention.