D&D General Forgotten Realms Book preview from NYCC

Nerd Initiative on YouTube previewed the new Forgotten Realms books with Mackenzie De Armas in this short video, including a quick flip-through of the Adventures in Faerun book.



During the quick flip-through, he shows off blurry but mostly readable pages from the Dalelands section of the book, including a few of the DMG-style adventures, including a level 13 adventure called Heart of Fire, where the party is asked to recover a magic item in an Adult Red Dragon's hoard.

Notably, none of the adventures you can see in the video seem to have any new monsters from the book included. Also, not all of the adventures are confined to a single page. Some seem to be at least a page and a half, while others are even smaller to just a half page.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

For anyone with the book...how do the other Faction rewards compare to getting a Dragon Egg??

You get loaned a Dragons egg, you don't actually do anything with it. There is NO rideable Amethyst Dragon mounts in the book at all. You get loan an egg for getting +50 rep in PDK, but what the purpose or benifit of it is, IDK because you can use it as a mount. I mean hell they could have at least had an Amethyst Dragon Mount Epic Boon at least!

What we ended up with is the worst of all worlds, they removed the Subclass that was the entire motivation for making the lore change to Purple Dragon Knights, but kept the lore changes that annoyed so many Realms Lore fans, and replaced it with unplaytested, unfixed, Banneret that everyone already hated from the SCAG because it sucked at what it was supposed to do. It's perhaps the biggest disaster of the book, it will make exactly zero people happy.

The faction lore is fine, they even list other factions that don't get mechanics even though just about every single one of them makes more sense then the Cult of the Dragon getting them. If not just playing it up as straight up serving Tchazzar, it would be useless unless your playing villians, which is rare.

The rest of the playable factions are fine.

 

[bedir than]

One of the things I've noticed with so many of these new Feats is that they are quite tactical. There's forced movement, responses to forced movement, reactions, opportunity attacks and responses to being the target of spells.
Plus some fun teamwork stuff.

 

[GarrettKP]

For the Factions, specifically the overtly evil Factions...how do they handle player characters? Like, can the player be part of a splinter section of the Cult of the Dragon that has a different modern theology or something...?

Not really. It’s for people wanting to play an evil campaign or a covert evil character.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean, starting from the 1970s in Greenwood's home game, having decades ahead of it's time diversity and representation.

All major ports are diverse - with the diversity increasing the longer the port has existed. Shakespeare wrote two plays about diversity 370 years before Ed Greenwood, and set them in Venice.

It is tailor built for Canadian Great Lakers to just slip into barely disguised Rennfaire play, it is not terribly European in vibe to me, but very Canadian.

The Sword Coast ports are oceanic. The Moonsea ports are Great Lake ports.

The approach to society, to government, etc. It's a subtle flavor thing?

London, as part of a nation state with a hereditary monarch was something of an outlier. Venice was ruled by a Doge (same root as Duke) who was selected from a cabal of important individuals, very like how Baldur's Gate is ruled. The Hansa ports were dominated by merchant companies more powerful than local monarchs. And Ankh-Morpork is a semi-benevolent dictatorship, much like Waterdeep. What do you mean Ankh-Morpork isn't real?

 

[Parmandur]

The Sword Coast ports are oceanic. The Moonsea ports are Great Lake ports.

I mean Great Lakes as in the culture of the cities and people around the North American Grest Lakes.

The Moonsea resembles thet geographically, but culturally Waterdeep is very Great Lakes.

Ankh-Mlrpork is Greyhawk/Lankhmar, just like Waterdeep.

But Lieber, Gygax and Greenwood were working off the North American Midwest, culturally.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ankh-Mlrpork is Greyhawk/Lankhmar, just like Waterdeep.

It's inspired by Lankhmar, but its a lot more London. Pratchett's time playing D&D was before the Greyhawk setting was released, so not really that.

The Moonsea resembles thet geographically, but culturally Waterdeep is very Great Lakes.

It's "culture" is generic. It has no specific cultural details.

 

[Yaarel]

Especially because of "Celtic" Moonshae Isles, I read the Swordcoast as Western Europe, the coastline from the Nordic Lands all the way to Spain. Albeit, these are the American wild west versions of the Medieval Europe nations.

In this context:

Icewind Dales: circumpolar nations (blending Sámi, Siberia, Inuit, etcetera)
→ Ruathym Island: Norway
Neverwinter: Stockholm, Sweden
Mere of Dead Men: bogs in Denmark
Waterdeep: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Baldurs Gate: London, (Anglosaxon) England
→ Moonshae Isles: (Celtic) Ireland, Wales, Scotland, with Viking areas
Amn: France
Tethyr: Northern Spain (Christian Leon, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia)
Calimshan: Southern Spain (Muslim Andalus)

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Not really. It’s for people wanting to play an evil campaign or a covert evil character.

Red Wizards I think have that exiled faction that isn't automatically evil. Plus Szass Tam has no problem supporting good characters or even Harper's against a mutual enemy, so that one is easy.

Modern Zhents as a whole is evil, but at the basic level they're just mercenaries that don't ask questions about your alignment.

The tough one is Cult of the Dragon, although they do not rarely some cultists see it as savior instead of Doom, I assume this refers to Tchazzar's splinter faction, so that is how I would play that. Still they listed many better choices on a practical level. Aurora's would have been a really cool choice honestly for a Faction, gathering and making magic items, ingredients, and lore for the magic shops.

Really though, there are also regional factions in AiF so if your unhappy with the 8, you can do those reps as well or instead.

 

[GarrettKP]

Red Wizards I think have that exiled faction that isn't automatically evil. Plus Szass Tam has no problem supporting good characters or even Harper's against a mutual enemy, so that one is easy.

Modern Zhents as a whole is evil, but at the basic level they're just mercenaries that don't ask questions about your alignment.

The tough one is Cult of the Dragon, although they do not rarely some cultists see it as savior instead of Doom, I assume this refers to Tchazzar's splinter faction, so that is how I would play that. Still they listed many better choices on a practical level. Aurora's would have been a really cool choice honestly for a Faction, gathering and making magic items, ingredients, and lore for the magic shops.

Really though, there are also regional factions in AiF so if your unhappy with the 8, you can do those reps as well or instead.

I think having an Evil faction or two is actually good for the book. There are plenty of tables that want support for playing evil people, and for those that don’t they still have 5 overtly good factions to use.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Red Wizards I think have that exiled faction that isn't automatically evil.

The is a non-evil Red Wizard party member in Masks of the Betrayer.