Campaign Setting - Pet Peeves

[Cryptos]

I know this is probably hostile territory for this, but I feel like I've just done a 180-degree spin RE: The Forgotten Realms.

I'm actually reading the non-crunch material in the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide and liking it. I thought I was a bit of a fool paying full price two days ago for (essentially) one class and one warlock path, and maybe I am. I fully expected to toss the rest of the book's contents aside.

Somewhere around the end of 2nd edition to the beginning of 3rd edition, I absolutely hated Forgotten Realms. I was sick of it. Everything seemed to be pushing FR, all the major video games seemed based on it. The 'big names' of the setting seemed to make adventure for the little guy implausible ("Wait, why doesn't Elminster just handle it himself?") Never mind all the copy-cat characters Realms fans would seem to create. The widespread areas of goodwill and racial harmony made me wonder how tiny pockets of evil survived and thrived, or where they came from in the first place. The geography didn't make much sense to me from a naturalistic standpoint, it seemed like someone threw a spastic interior decorator with godlike powers onto the continent and had him move around mountain ranges to taste. Since in many popular parts of FR, danger didn't seem to be on anyone's doorstep, I largely credit the setting with all the abysmal, unimaginative "you meet in a tavern and explore a tomb" campaigns.

I was even skeptical of the preview material for the "new" Realms. I honestly wished the Forgotten Realms would be, well, forgotten. But this... granted, I haven't seen the FRCS book... this seems completely different.

I was just looking through the descriptions of the regional benefits for starting characters to see if it was something I wanted to use in my own setting, and wound up reading the entire entries on some. Some of them actually gave me adventure ideas, one gave me an entire campaign idea, pieces falling into place one by one as I read. FR hasn't inspired me since... well, let's just say I was somewhere just beyond puberty and there was this grey box.

I'm not ready to endorse the setting whole cloth, but I am now intrigued. In brief, it seems they've taken the 'Points of Light in the darkness' thing to the extreme. It doesn't seen like a Dungeons and Dragons Family Theme Park at all any more. There's evil in the world, and it has easy access to everyone else; the world is being radically changed and torn apart by powerful, unknown magic; and there don't seem to be a whole lot of people standing up for the little guy, he's on his own. There actually appears to be room for adventure here that doesn't involve treading in anyone else's footsteps.

I guess my big question to anyone that might know is: Is this consistent with what's in the actual campaign setting book (FRCS)?

Other questions: Is the FRCS book set up in a similar way to the FRPG's Background chapter? I like the way it breaks things down by region. Does the FRCS cram a bunch of high-powered NPCs down your throat? The FRPG doesn't seem to mention them, thankfully. Is there a template for these Spellplague-mutated creatures in the campaign book?

 

[Ycore Rixle]

These both fall under my numbers one and two above, though in terms of poor execution, your number six definitely bothers me more.

Yep. Me too. And the fact that it has been going on since the dawn of the industry, and there's been so little progress made on the issue. Eberron, at least, tried to make some progress here.

 

[megamania]

I thought this would be an easy question to answer but it isn't for me. I tend to ignore what I don't like and build on what I want to the point I don't even relieze it anymore. It's more about the play style.

Pet Peeves- No room for DM creativity

Pet Peeve- The sense one requires to but ALL the books related to the campaign world (I'm looking at you FR)

Pet Peeve- No room for new races or creatures... even psionics

Pet Peeve- fanatic fans that believe there can be only ONE good campaign world and all others suck. If done right, each should have it's own feel and style that makes it unique.

and after reading some of the prior answers I agree... evolution of magic and technology. I never thought about it much but there should be huge advancements in it. The "real" world hass been working on 10,000 years and we have flight in space and nuclear tech etc... Most campaigns the freakin' elves and dwarves controlled the world 10,000 years ago. So why do they have the same tech (low) as everyone else?

Something to think about. Thankyou for that folks.

 

[jdrakeh]

Yep. Me too. And the fact that it has been going on since the dawn of the industry, and there's been so little progress made on the issue. Eberron, at least, tried to make some progress here.

Yeah, I edited my post to go into more detail with regard to that, though the forums ate it twice before I could get it to appear correctly

 

[S'mon]

I think this belief in Progress is a very western-European, very Anglo-Saxon, and in modern times especially American, thing. Technological progress as something noticeable within the lifetime of an individual is no more than 500 years old. Greeks believed in cycles of growth and decline. Romans believed that material growth accompanied moral decline. There is nothing to indicate that rapid technological progress or industrial revolution is historically mandated, and plenty to indicate it is a unique phenomena arising out of a unique culture and time - a culture and time that may not last forever, may indeed already have peaked.

 

[Dire Bare]

3) The Setting never Goes Beyond 14th Century:

I have always enjoyed settings that integrate technology into their settings or set in different time-periods. So I always disliked how no matter how long the setting lasts technology won't improve. I like my settings where knights charge firing revolvers.

I'm not as nit-picky as some in the thread, but I've always chuckled about this one too. In the real world, you go back a couple of centuries and the world is very different. In most D&D fantasy settings, you go back a couple of millenia and things are pretty much the same.

Star Wars is guilty of this too. I love KOTOR, but for a game set 4,000 years before the trilogy, it's not really all that different at all.

 

[Dire Bare]

I think this belief in Progress is a very western-European, very Anglo-Saxon, and in modern times especially American, thing. Technological progress as something noticeable within the lifetime of an individual is no more than 500 years old. Greeks believed in cycles of growth and decline. Romans believed that material growth accompanied moral decline. There is nothing to indicate that rapid technological progress or industrial revolution is historically mandated, and plenty to indicate it is a unique phenomena arising out of a unique culture and time - a culture and time that may not last forever, may indeed already have peaked.

You're right, that cultural and technological "progress" is a very eurocentric idea. But for me it's not so much progress as change. If I were to time travel to the Dark Ages and get a good feel for the era, then time travel again back a few centuries, the world would again be a very different place from where I had just been.

Fantasy cultures are often very static over millenia. Tens of millenia sometimes!! Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms are classic examples of this, as is the Mystara setting I grew up on. Names might change, national borders might change, there might be a world-wide cataclysm or two in there somewhere . . . but just about each "era" of a fantasy setting fits the standard D&D mold pretty well.

 

[jdrakeh]

Technological progress as something noticeable within the lifetime of an individual is no more than 500 years old.

Nobody is talking about that, though — they're talking about technological advancement over thousands of years (something that many fantasy RPG settings lack). Are you claiming that humanity made no technological progress from the Stone Age through the Renaissance?

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Hehe, well thus why it is a fun question to see how diverse people's likes/dislikes can be

Absolutely.

To really say it all for me - My favorite genre is 4 color superhero (or at worst gilded iron tone (like the stuff Geoff Johns or Kurt Busiek write)). When I play in fantasy I want that kind of feel.

 

[S'mon]

Nobody is talking about that, though — they're talking about technological advancement over thousands of years (something that many fantasy RPG settings lack). Are you claiming that humanity made no technological progress from the Stone Age through the Renaissance?

I'm only saying that technology did not change hugely even in Europe between the dawn of the Iron Age and about AD 1400, ca 2500 years. Much less than it has between 1938 and 2008. Furthermore, some technologies regressed, were abandoned, etc. I agree that normally over the span of thousands of years there will often be big cultural changes, with some exceptions like Egypt ca 3000-1000 BC, but there is no reason to expect huge technological changes in a D&D setting or that it is necessarily on the cusp of a renaissance. I don't find eg Tolkien's permanent-dark-ages tech level at all implausible.

I mention this because Inevitability-of-Progress is a pet peeve of mine.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The Gods of the Copybook Headings