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Can't see why I'd single out the ruleset from several more important elements this outstanding GM is deciding on. I think it's too short to spend despising RPG systems. I'd class that as basic competence -- assuming the GM is going for that. If it's the kind of campaign that foregrounds the...

None of these rulesets are 'upgrades' of each other, they're parallel approaches to different sets of design goals. Pretending one ruleset is 'better' or more 'evolved' than another is just a way of shilling books. Two reasons are that David Cook took the surface of the AD&D rules while...

I'd love to see a ruleset that really fits Middle-earth -- something more freeform than the Rolemaster-derived MERP and the d20like Coda system. HeroQuest would work well. I think the idea that Gary substantially derived D&D from Tolkien is a popular assumption that doesn't stand up to...

RPG authors are less respected than they should be because publishers play up brands and play down individual writers and their names, so they aren't dependent on them and can stop paying them with minimal harm to the all-important brands. The ENnies, which list books by publisher rather than...

I'd go with the original, rather than the hybrids and reinterpretations, every time.

In broad terms, I'd start it as you would most Realms campaigns: with a set of smaller plot threads and happenings going on around the PCs which they can choose to involve themselves with, and perhaps a catalyzing event that drives them in a particular starting direction. Using the 'wheels...

The designers would confirm my characterization. In a deliberate shift of policy, they're explicitly and consistently substituting new design principles for many of the Realms', as was never done before.

In Realms-2008 the setting is being bent and selectively replaced without question to accommodate every rules element, when before TSR compromised, only sometimes using the Realms as a dumping ground, at others letting it be itself. There's a clear shift from the previous approaches, where the...

If you have Campaign Cartographer you could edit Linda Kekumu's World of Greyhawk Map to remove the labels.

Repeating the 'geek' prejudice as a fact certainly isn't.

Leo Grin has posted his habitually eloquent tribute at the Cimmerian blog. He also links to others.

I have a fairly strong mental link between the term 'tiefling' and Tony DiTerlizzi artwork. Most of the D&D monsters are 'unnecessary'. D&D lore, like legend and folklore, wasn't built according to utilitarian minimalism.

I like Gary's character and place names very much. They certainly aren't 'bad' in any objective sense.

Unfortunately, not exactly. PG2 Player’s Guide to the Forgotten Realms Campaign is a story with lore sidebars, while the 3E Player's Guide is a set of rules updates plus appendices. TSR had access to the 'your character knows this' packets Ed prepared for his players, but didn't use them. I can...

Thank you. I'm sympathetic towards the people who are more enthusiastic than I am, but some of their posts are pretty callous about what's being lost, like the selfish calls for Dragon not to feature setting-specific articles or for Polyhedron to be removed from Dungeon.

It's the Avatar novels that are the exception: the rest of Realmslore, including the religious sourcebooks, paints a quite different picture, and it's only recently that Wizards decided to adopt the obvious literary conceit of the Avatar books as the way the gods really are, never mind how...

Realms gnomes have a clear conception, but it's unfamiliar because the more popular elves and dwarves have got so much more attention in print. But leaving gnomes from the first set of PC races in 4E actually fits the Realms well -- the Forgotten Folk shouldn't be front-and-centre.

Unfortunately, when the decision-makers change every several years, each with their own preferences and enthusiasms, those explicit and implicit threads are liable to be submerged and lost in the bright, shiny new plots. Trends in the originally published Realms as basic as the open...

I suspect Realms-2008 is pretty well thought out, as a Frankenstein designed to appeal to as many different groups as possible while minimizing development costs, with Realmslore rationalizations crafted sometimes post hoc around these priorities, though I dare say with a nice dose of guesswork...

This repost should do. This is based more on the designers' comments about their aims in interviews, blogs and message board posts than on Rich's article, which just tells us a little more about the implementation of purposes they've already been pretty clear about.