D&D 5E 5th edition Forgotten Realms: Why can't you just ignore the lore?

[pemerton]

Sounds like a very boring campaign when the world reshapes itself to always give what the players/pcs need or want and the only challenges seemingly are those you specifically put into and plan for.

Only if by "boring" you mean "awesome"!

If the players are any good, there will be more challenges they (and their PCs) are expressly interested in than can be resolved in the playing time available. There's no need for rail-roady roadblocking by the GM to introduce irrelevant challenges that no one is interested in.

 

[Sailor Moon]

Oh hey Hobbitfan, I'd never suggest that. You don't headline NYT Best seller lists multiple times if you suck. And I love the Baldur's Gate games.

I'm certainly not anti Realms.

Otoh I don't see the NPC's as being central to the setting. Waterdeep and the Sword Coast are great. As is Cormyr.

I think that the realms work kinda like the Star Wars universe. There are better games to be had if we can sort of push the big name NPC's off to one side.

Every single high level NPC can vanish with only a single thought in your Realms.

People here have been told what they can do repeatedly to solve their problem.

 

[Sailor Moon]

Didn't you *just* create a thread bashing the Tyranny of a Dragons storyline for slightly changing the lore of the Cult of the Dragon?

And?

Is there some sort of thread limit each member is on?

 

[Hussar]

And?

Is there some sort of thread limit each member is on?

I believe he was commenting on the irony of the fact that on one hand, your solution for any DM who has problems running the Realms is to simply change the canon of the Realms to taste, but, apparently, if any published work does exactly the same thing, you get rather upset about it, to the point of starting multiple threads complaining about changes to canon.

 

[Jester David]

And?

Is there some sort of thread limit each member is on?

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] beat me to it:

I believe he was commenting on the irony of the fact that on one hand, your solution for any DM who has problems running the Realms is to simply change the canon of the Realms to taste, but, apparently, if any published work does exactly the same thing, you get rather upset about it, to the point of starting multiple threads complaining about changes to canon.

Why can't people ignore canon? I think you know the answer as well as I do: continuity errors are freakin' infuriating and seem lazy, like the writer couldn't be bothered to spend 10 minutes researching the Cult of the Dragon. (I was super critical of Tyranny of Dragons for that reason as well until I found they had done their research and I had missed something.)

 

[Shemeska]

I believe he was commenting on the irony of the fact that on one hand, your solution for any DM who has problems running the Realms is to simply change the canon of the Realms to taste, but, apparently, if any published work does exactly the same thing, you get rather upset about it, to the point of starting multiple threads complaining about changes to canon.

While Sailormoon has been a bit overly insistent in some recent threads, I think what was said earlier in this thread is a perfectly reasonable take when it comes to how a given RPG setting IP is handled by designers and developers when publishing a product versus how individual DMs at home handle it.

By all means, please tweak, twist, mangle, and make your own of a given setting within your home game - that's part of what makes it fun and personalized.

But it's important for the cohesion and continued success of setting IP that those people working on it professionally and being paid for that to be aware of the material at a high level, to retain continuity and cohesion as much as possible (unless you're excising something that was itself a retcon or gaff in a prior product), and to act as a responsible caretaker for the property in question. It's just part of being professional and doing a job at a high level. It's important that you keep continuity to make sure that players are starting off with the same basic assumptions regarding a setting, and then applying whatever changes or house rules in their own campaigns. This isn't including as necessarily bad if you evolve a campaign in a radical direction and move it forward thusly in print - that will always be a matter of taste as to it being successful or not - but doing that doesn't imply breaking continuity when doing so, and if you do break continuity in grand fashion when doing that, something went seriously wrong.

Where would you disagree on that and why? I'm curious.

 

[Sailor Moon]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] beat me to it:


Why can't people ignore canon? I think you know the answer as well as I do: continuity errors are freakin' infuriating and seem lazy, like the writer couldn't be bothered to spend 10 minutes researching the Cult of the Dragon. (I was super critical of Tyranny of Dragons for that reason as well until I found they had done their research and I had missed something.)

I run two types of Realms games.

1: I use pure canon pre-spellplague.

2: Homebrew Realms.

In the first, I want rich and continuous lore. I didn't fall in love with a Realms that was left vague and told it was entirely up to me to fill in the blanks. Filling in the blanks is an option that will always be there even when those "blanks" are filled with something else. Forgotten Realms is a living setting so I want anything that qualifies as a RSE to be consistant with the lore.

In my second game game, I borrow things here and there and add my own spin on it.

 

[Derren]

Only if by "boring" you mean "awesome"!

If the players are any good, there will be more challenges they (and their PCs) are expressly interested in than can be resolved in the playing time available. There's no need for rail-roady roadblocking by the GM to introduce irrelevant challenges that no one is interested in.

Just because the players don't always get exactly what they want it is not a "rail-roady roadblocking". Instead this is what adds the spice to a game which is otherwise just a boring hop along.

 

[pemerton]

Just because the players don't always get exactly what they want it is not a "rail-roady roadblocking". Instead this is what adds the spice to a game which is otherwise just a boring hop along.

Here is the post that you replied to:

while running HotDQ my players needed to get up to Waterdeep to deliver something (they went epically off the rails). I showed them the map of the Sword Coast so they could see where they were and plot a course. They noticed a coastal town called Candlekeep and asked if they would be able to grab a ship there. Not knowing the lore, I said 'sure, that sounds fine'.

You are the one who asserted that this game would be better if the GM had not let the PCs get their ship and get to Waterdeep, where the players could engage in the adventure they were interested in, and instead had roadblocked and said that the PCs had trouble finding a ship.

I repeat again: I think your suggestion to this relatively new GM that s/he should be roadblocking his/her players is a bad one. You are encouraging railroad-y roadblocking over driving the adventure in a direction that is interesting to everyone at the table.

Your coments about "the players getting what they want" is a red herring. The action in the game that was described is the delivery in Waterdeep. Neither of us knows what that involved, nor how it was resolved. But if the GM is any good - and it sounds like s/he is - then that will have been the spice. The idea that haggling over a ship. or having to make endless swim checks in the absence of a check, adds "spice" isn't one I see any evidence for. Unless by "spice" you mean "pointless tedium".

 

[billd91]

Here is the post that you replied to:

You are the one who asserted that this game would be better if the GM had not let the PCs get their ship and get to Waterdeep, where the players could engage in the adventure they were interested in, and instead had roadblocked and said that the PCs had trouble finding a ship.

I repeat again: I think your suggestion to this relatively new GM that s/he should be roadblocking his/her players is a bad one. You are encouraging railroad-y roadblocking over driving the adventure in a direction that is interesting to everyone at the table.

I think the two of you are talking past each other. But I'd have to say that I don't think portraying Candlekeep as a library town with no shipping wouldn't have been railroady or roadblocky at all had the DM done so. It wouldn't have directly contributed to the PCs getting to Waterdeep, but it still could lead to interesting play in the campaign.