Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3815036" data-attributes="member: 32740">Forgotten RealmsWhat hooked me:The fact that it was THERE was a major bonus.  I'd been DMing for a while but having to grind out EVERYTHING from scratch.  There just weren't any campaign settings to use.  I didn't have much desire to get into Greyhawk at the time though.  It didn't help that I never saw it for sale anywhere.  Anyway, I was starting to DM full time and other DM's were abandoning their campaigns and just playing in mine even though I was still making some noob decisions.  I wanted a setting to use.  FR came along.  I liked the maps a lot (big selling point with me, silly as it may be to some).  I liked the other stuff I read.  Waterdeep probably really sank the barb in.  When I got those big maps of Waterdeep, in addition to the endless supply of supplements, etc. I had more than enough.What lost me:Playing in this same setting for 15+ years in campaign after campaign - not only my own but in those games where I was a player as well.  No, I/we never covered everything there was to see and do in the Realms.  We never got too far from Waterdeep, Dales, and Cormyr.  But I was getting bored with it.  I was also turned off that EVERY FREAKING INCH of that game world was being detailed.  Sure, I didn't have to use it but they sure didn't have to develop it all either.  Example - in the original boxed set it was specifically stated they would NOT develop Sembia.  It would be untouched for DM's to do what they wanted with it.  They went back on their word and what they did with it I didn't even find at all interesting which only compounded the crime.  There were also the countless "discussions" about the overblown "Mary Sue" NPC's and Drizzt clones.  Even though I ignored such things entirely in my own games I tired of seeing everyone else OBSESSED with proclaiming them BadWrongFun for them even existing in someone ELSES campaign.  Then I started looking closely at that big map and finding all kinds of things about it that I didn't like and didn't make sense.  I can handle scorching deserts in subarctic lattitudes - this is fantasy after all - but there were rivers going up and over hills and the mountains looked like they'd been sneezed onto the map in big globs rather than developed as mountain RANGES, and basically it all looked like it was spit out by a random generator rather than with any sense of development.  About the time I was deep into completely rearranging the entire freaking continent I said, "I've had it with this place and I'm never coming back."  Seriously - I swore I'd never run another game set in the Realms.  I'd jump in as a player but even that wouldn't be by my own preference.What kept me in it longer than I thought:The FRCS, it being the only setting for 3E when I started a new campaign (and in which I nonetheless RADICALLY and arbitrarily altered the place), and no desire to burden myself yet with scratchbuilding an entire setting again.It was not until Judges Guild finished their revisions of the Wilderlands and City State of the Invincible Overlord did I have a suitable replacement.</blockquote>

Verification