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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orias" data-source="post: 1027269" data-attributes="member: 8165">The fact is that people's problems with the Realms have been heard over & over again. I still stand by my statement that Forgotten Realms is the best designed, well-thought out setting since Arda.The comment about Forgotten Realms not having intelligent trade routes is about moot. First of all, you are in a magical setting. Achieving specific items & resources is either much more difficult, or much more simple than in real life, because instead of just being able to cut down specific tress, or mine specific metals, you have to deal with mythological creatures & hazards, who equally make less sense than the trade routes you are attacking. Then, you have ways by which to deliver goods in a non-realistic setting, & then you also have routes that you cannot trade on, because of populations of mythological creatures, & because of existing empires who you haven't gotten along with, longer than reality man has existed on reality earth. The whole trade route argument just doesn't add up, because frankly you can't understand the conditions of each country until you have read down to the very last fiber about what the country produces, it's history, it's employment rate, this that, whatever. It's too big of an issue to understand in a FICTIONAL setting that you aren't able to look at in a realistic manner.The next comment about the cultures being "sloppy" is laughable. The cultures in Forgotten Realms actually have been developed. You can trace their ancestors, & you can trace their immigration, & why they are the way they are. You can see their wars, their advancements, & their falls. You can see the people who came from those cultures, & what they did. You can see how they developed their language, & who they borrowed their alphabet from. Just because the Egyptians got gated in from Prime Earth doesn't make it sloppy. Almost all of the races in Fearun came from one portal or another. There were only five races in the beginning of Toril in the first place, but now there are thousands. So just because humans do it, it is sloppy, where almost every setting uses the Lower Planes?THen you have Kenjib arguing that Kalamr's cultures are soooo much more diverse than Forgotten Realms, & siting "well, out of the handful of cultures, they reflect a mix of earth's settings, but out of the dozens of FR's, I am going to pick three & use them as examples, instead of talking about the racial diversity of Tethyr, or the cultural mix of Halruaa & Dambrath, or any of the other countries". It's replies like this that makes me question if anyone has read anything more than other people's commentaries on what their problems with FR is, rather than actually reading the main books.Then, the next problem is usually that the books are used as "canon", which they usually are not. Some of the books have been inducted into canon, some of the books actually were written to further the story of the Realms, but a majority of the Realms books are stated as non-canon. If your players have a problem with that, then it is the DM's stance to put his/her foot down & say "NO". Just because you have some players who have read a few books doesn't mean that you have to let them or do this. Did you read the first page of the FR setting? Either the second or third edition?Next, you have people complaining about high-level PCs. That is a problem to many people, but how do you expect a setting ran in the D&D rules to exist, with all of these different cultures & wars, yet to NOT have people achieve the levels that Elminster does, particually in a setting where gods walk the earth? I understand if that's a problem people have with play, but it should never be anything that takes center stage.The fact is that we are playing in a FANTASY setting. Things are FANTASTICAL. Things don't always make sense, nor should they. If I want everything to exist in a geographically realistic manner, I would play in Earth, remove magic, remove fantastic monsters, & just play fuedal battles, but that isn't what I want. I want magic, swords, dragons, knights, liches, & all that sort. I want adventures & dungeons that have existed for thousands of years undiscovered. I want the chance to see a being from another world.Kalamar is just too close to earth to me. It has it's advantages, but all of the cultures do seem like a bland rip-off of earths. Granted FR also has their own that seem this way, but years of products & meta-plot has kind of changed that for many places, Mulhorand included. So you have vikings in your setting, so why are you complaining when I have egyptians in mine. It's all a matter of personal preference.</blockquote>

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