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In these discussions I don't recall reading much explanation of why, as well as avoiding descriptions tainted by racism and colonialism, it's better to make orcs more like morally diverse people rather than more absolutely monsters. One reason, I see, is that there's long been a cultural trend...

I agree with Jester David's wall of text. Of course the bit about adults pretending comics aren't for kids isn't what happened. There was an arbitrary belief among people who didn't read comics that they were for children, and that the quality of a work was somehow determined by its medium...

And obviously, all things being equal, they will be less safe from sexual harassment or assault in an environment whose organizers don't seem to take it seriously and seem perplexed that people would want them to take preventative steps against it.

What reasons are there to suppose this?

Eh?

For me, finding and learning from tutors is a compelling part of the story I want to take part in about adventurers, as the arts of the warrior, mage, priest and thief are passed down through the generations. I don't find the idea of PCs achieving mastery all by themselves, outside of larger...

This work has been done for the Realms already -- even though it's not fully published, the Faiths & Avatars series and Elminster's Forgotten Realms have a lot of what you want. The 'pick one patron god' thing is largely a 3E rules artefact. On the other hand, while doctrine (and orthodoxy) is a...

I put in my pledge. What kinds of PC groups do you envisage? Although Conan worked with others at various times, Howard focused on single protagonists, so this is one of the things you'll have to 'pastiche' somewhat.

As a player, I'm far more likely to want to play in a coherent setting than an anything-goes campaign, and I wouldn't dream of not cooperating with it -- that would be rude and bizarre. In my experience, a high proportion of eccentric character-type choices, whether that standard is the...

I think this is basically right. I never delved into exactly how the Wall of the Faithless got added to the published Realms, but it also contradicts the fundamental point that people in Faerûn don't know what happens after death -- all they have to go on is what the priests tell them and...

I'm not sure it came across in that thread, but magic item shops of the 3E variety are expressly not part of Ed's concept of the Realms. The closest you find is curio shops like the Old Xoblob Shop in Waterdeep that *might* have a magical thing or two somewhere.

Which is right, e.g. A Grand Tour of the Realms p. 7: 'Among the dwarves, these northern dwarves are known as mountain dwarves to show their home terrain, or shield dwarves to reflect their battle prowess and history.'

Like the use of the Erin Evans quotation. Don't like 'a tiefling's bloodline doesn't affect his or her personality to any great degree', compared to Races of Faerûn's 'Carrying the taint of evil in their very souls'. Fiendish blood just gives you a cool tail, special powers and a platform for...

If you divide distances in feet by three, that's about the number of metres -- and also the number of paces or strides, which works better than either as an in-world term to use in play. I wouldn't bother thinking much about exact weights, unless your characters carry scales.

I'd like to see a balanced variant set of classes without unlimited cantrips, unqualified specialist wizard bonuses, wild shape and paladin/ranger spells at low levels, second wind, and so on.

That text is lifted from The North: Guide to the Savage Frontier, which is set in 1370 DR. But given the intention to make the fifth-edition Realms like the fourteenth-century Realms, they'd not be getting off to a good start if the scenario didn't work in the original setting.

1987: original published Realms geography, based on Ed Greenwood's hand-drawn maps, unchanged until 2001 2001: geography distorted to fit more land area on third-edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting poster map, though distortion is less in central Faerûn; maps with Dragon #287–290 are...

Gary Gygax's D&D games didn't prioritize simulationist or narrativist consistency, but equally they were far from abstract exercises in tactics or rules manipulation. They don't match very well any modern classification I'm aware of. Gary turned against the term 'story' in his later discussion...

I think the big question is what the product line will be like, how much it will focus on adventures, source material and other content rather than rules expansions. We do know the approximate timeline of the new version of the Realms -- not long after The Herald, which takes place in the Year...

Yes, Elminster's Forgotten Realms is very representative, and it makes a fine companion to the Old Grey Box (the 1987 campaign set), the one discussing how things generally work, the other giving geographical, biographical and historical examples. As an introduction to the Realms it has the...