D&D General Forgotten Realms - why do you still like running games here? +

[Paul Farquhar]

Spellfire I've heard is a great starting point.

 

[Libertad]

Why, what's wrong with it?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why, what's wrong with it?

Apart from being the worst novel I ever read you mean?

either someone has been yanking your chain or you are yanking mine.

 

[Libertad]

Apart from being the worst novel I ever read you mean?

either someone has been yanking your chain or you are yanking mine.

While watching Ed Greenwood streaming Baldur's Gate 3, one of the viewers asked him good novels for newbies to get into the Realms. Ed listed Spellfire as one of them.

 

[gban007]

While watching Ed Greenwood streaming Baldur's Gate 3, one of the viewers asked him good novels for newbies to get into the Realms. Ed listed Spellfire as one of them.

Ed may be biased there though as the author. At same time though, i think it captures well the early intended atmosphere of the realms, just isn't greatly written.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

While watching Ed Greenwood streaming Baldur's Gate 3, one of the viewers asked him good novels for newbies to get into the Realms. Ed listed Spellfire as one of them.

‘Cos he wrote it. Ed is a great guy, but a terrible author.

 

[Parmandur]

‘Cos he wrote it. Ed is a great guy, but a terrible author.

As an author, he is a pretty good Dungeon Master.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

1. Why? Familiarity, mostly. After all these years running a game set in the Forgotten Realms is almost second nature. Second, I made the setting mine after all these years. It's still very much recognizable and easily approachable by a player who knows the realms from playing the games or reading the books, but my Realms have the accomplishments of my players steering it's history.

2. How do you approach the setting? I set it in 1490s and later, but I aim for the Grey Box vibe and use it as supplementary info. Lorewise I tend to stick to 5e stuff to not overwhelm the players, since the 5e guide is very... light. It gives me freedon to input my own stuff too. And I avoid touching the spellplage.

3. How long has it been your campaign setting of choice? Since 2019. I toyed with it before when I played past editions, but when the 4th was released I went to Pathfinder and only came back to D&D some years after the 5e was released and started running a campaign set in Waterdeep loosely based on Dragon Heist. Since then most my D&D campaigns are set in the Forgotten Realms.

4. What are your favorite game supplements? I really like the Grey Box and it's the baseline for the "vibe" of the Forgotten Realms I use to run, but I used the Baldur's Gate Gazettee from Descent into Avernus, the Neverwinter Campaign Guide and the Waterdeep Gazetter from Dragon Heist A LOT these past years. And I have very fond memories running Phandelver.


5. Do you like any of the novels? Which ones? And do you use the novels for game material? Drizzt is cool and I like the old Salvatore novels, but I avoid using it's contents or characters when I'm running it.

 

[kermit4karate]

How do you approach the setting? What I like is in; what I don't is not. I twist, change, pick and choose at my own liking. That way, the long history ceases to become a chain and becomes a toolbox. I lean into the aspects that interest me, steal from other settings, change bits here or there that I think make it more evocative, etc. I do forbid my players from browsing the FR wiki and enforce such forbiddance stringently; any knowledge they get about the setting comes from me.

This was good! "That way, the long history ceases to become a chain and becomes a toolbox."

 

[kermit4karate]

Hopefully not opening a can of worms- but does everyone still running the realms run their drow and orcs in the traditional sense (monoculture and always bad enough to kill) or have you altered this in your world? Not a judgement statement, but it seems a lot of people have warmed up to not running races this way (either due to ethical implications or simply because it can become dull over time), while some have strong arguments for the traditional approach. It seems to me that altering these approaches has an impact on a setting like the Realms (and Greyhawk) more than it does on some others.

If you've changed your approach, how has it affected your version of the realms?

Yes, I still play them the same way, same monocultures, which I always understood as akin to Japan or Saudi Arabia -- culturally closed off, not very welcome to foreigners.

For instance, I never took the characterization of drow society in FR by its social critics as something other than a misguided-but-well-intentioned mischaracterization. The society churns out bad guys because it's a toxic, corrupt society led by monsters -- somewhat like Nazi Germany or Afghanistan under Taliban rule. That said, "good" individuals do still exist there, although they must hide within the society.

I am unconcerned about potential blowback from this perspective, too, because I know how I interpret "monoculture" and know the difference between a fantasy game world and real life.