D&D 5E Forgotten Realms

[ForeverSlayer]

I never bought into the whole 'super NPCs' took over my realms campaigns so the PCs couldnt be the heroes BS. FR ninjas don't come in and make you use them or add them to your FR campaign. Same goes with the canon. Its there for those who want it.

 

[seregil]

I never bought into the whole 'super NPCs' took over my realms campaigns so the PCs couldn't be the heroes BS. FR ninjas don't come in and make you use them or add them to your FR campaign. Same goes with the canon. Its there for those who want it.

I see your point, but i got out of FR originally because of the glut of books and stuff. I wanted to stay current and follow the meta-plot. Also, the books were useful. The side effect of that was the omni-presence of powerful NPCs and the overwhelming feeling of not being in control of the campaign.

Now, later, I realize that I didn't have to use the fluff, that I could just pick and choose but at the time, I wanted to keep track of stuff and the easiest way was to use the books. The reason why I use a printed setting is to let them do the heavy lifting.

Now, I use the Old Grey Box, Fr 1, Fr3, FR5 and nothing else.

I don't want 20 layers of stuff in my campaign but, at the same time, I want to be able to use the setting without having to customize it for hours. A pre-made setting it there to make my life easier, not harder. This is where (IMO) the power-creep of FR and the NPC bloat pushed people away: to lower the power level, you would need to do a lot of work and then keep track of your changes.

Not interesting, as far as I am concerned. Elminster is a wizard. A good one, a powerful one, but just a wizard. No Chosen, no Mythals, nothing overpowered.

 

[Halivar]

I never bought into the whole 'super NPCs' took over my realms campaigns so the PCs couldnt be the heroes BS. FR ninjas don't come in and make you use them or add them to your FR campaign. Same goes with the canon. Its there for those who want it.

This is one of the reasons, though, that I don't like published settings, and don't use them. They always come part and parcel with movers and shakers, and I prefer my players to have a monopoly on that.

That being said, I am fully cognizant of the importance or published settings to other DM's, and I've said before that I am in the minority in this, and thus not to be catered to.

But yeah, setting heroes suck. I will never use FR because the first player that says he's looking for Drizz't is getting an ogre spear in the face.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

This is one of the reasons, though, that I don't like published settings, and don't use them. They always come part and parcel with movers and shakers, and I prefer my players to have a monopoly on that.

That being said, I am fully cognizant of the importance or published settings to other DM's, and I've said before that I am in the minority in this, and thus not to be catered to.

But yeah, setting heroes suck. I will never use FR because the first player that says he's looking for Drizz't is getting an ogre spear in the face.

Just do what I do.

Drizzt who?

 

[Brock Landers]

Drizzt who?

Now works the streets of Calimport as rough-trade.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

That's more or less my approach to the Realms -- I use the Grey Box, and the 3E FRCS, and treat it much like the Greyhawk folio -- a great map, place names and histories, groups and intentions, but I drop kick the major NPCs and insert my own motivations and plans.

Just 'cause WotC says it happens doesn't mean it did in My Realms (in whatever iteration -- I shake it up from campaign to campaign).

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The closer I stuck to the original grey box the happier I was with The Realms. I played in and used The Realms as a setting so much though that I OVERplayed it. I actually swore to never, EVER run The Realms again as a DM. I've thought briefly once or twice about going back on that pledge but still can't find reason enough to do so. The players never had too much issue with it's population of high-profile, high-level NPC's but it did come up more often that it ever did in other settings despite the fact that other settings I'd run also had equally high-level NPC's. It was harder for me as DM to ignore those NPC's because it was annoying to justify to MY satisfaction how/why certain events would take place without repeatedly having to find an excuse to NOT have them involved in things that the setting assumes they will be. So I started those campaigns by publicly declaring them dead or to have never existed and it was much easier on myself and the players.

Actually, the secondary reason I swore off The Realms was the maps. I started to really hate them. I made it a project to completely revamp the map of the whole of Faerun so that I could tolerate it again but then combined with the aforementioned I just chose to move on and not regret the vow to not go back.

 

[dd.stevenson]

The funny thing about people's reactions to the 4E Realms is that at the time they decided to do it... I think the folks at WotC really seemed to think that what they chose to do was doing all the players a favor. Something that many of them actually were clamoring for. At least, as far as I remember of the time.

...

So the 100 year jump I think they genuinely thought was going to be a good one. Not only did it clear the table so-to-speak for all players to not have decades of history to worry about and thus they could make their own histories... not only did it remove or lessen the influence of all the super NPCs and thus the player's PCs could have more of an impact... but it also gave a reason to explain away the stuff 4E was bringing into the game without invalidating or retconning any of the Realms that had occurred before.

...


But the downside of course being that players of the 3.5 timeline would feel like their portal to current Realms history was being cut off, plus feeling like WotC was asking them to discontinue their own campaigns to make the 100 year jump, especially if they were going to transition to playing 4E.

This is more or less what Rich Baker said in an interview at Rogue Warden shortly after he was laid off.

RW: What do you feel is your greatest setback as an RPG professional?

RB: I’d say, 4th Edition Forgotten Realms. It’s clear in retrospect that 4th Edition D&D created a very damaging split in the D&D audience, and we compounded that mistake by “taking away” the existing Realms in the process of providing a new Realms for the 4e fans to play. We would have been better off to produce a clean, comprehensive “current era” 4e, or even restarting the setting. I wish I could tell you that it wasn’t my idea, or that I resisted the change, but that wouldn’t be entirely true; while I had my reservations, I was persuaded that a reset was necessary and made plenty of my own contributions to the new Realms. (Most of my work was in the background and planning—I actually did very little writing in the 4e FR Campaign Setting or Player’s Guide to Faerun.)

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

This is more or less what Rich Baker said in an interview at Rogue Warden shortly after he was laid off.

Thanks for digging up that interview, [MENTION=6683099]dd.stevenson[/MENTION].

I’d say, 4th Edition Forgotten Realms. It’s clear in retrospect that 4th Edition D&D created a very damaging split in the D&D audience, and we compounded that mistake by “taking away” the existing Realms in the process of providing a new Realms for the 4e fans to play. We would have been better off to produce a clean, comprehensive “current era” 4e, or even restarting the setting. I wish I could tell you that it wasn’t my idea, or that I resisted the change, but that wouldn’t be entirely true; while I had my reservations, I was persuaded that a reset was necessary and made plenty of my own contributions to the new Realms. (Most of my work was in the background and planning—I actually did very little writing in the 4e FR Campaign Setting or Player’s Guide to Faerun.)

(Emphasis mine.)

I know WotC's plans for 5E's Realms are now set in stone, but I would dearly love to see an updated Old Grey Box by Ed with a strong focus on Cormyr, the Dalelands, Waterdeep, and The North which were the areas he first developed and which, to this day, feel the most "alive" to me. (And, yes, that is a very subjective opinion.) With a fairly narrow focus, and a small font like 3E's FRCS, we could get a 320-page book which I think would really rock and appeal to Old School and younger/newer gamers as well.

And get Mike Schley to do the maps.

​

 

[delericho]

With a fairly narrow focus, and a small font like 3E's FRCS, we could get a 320-page book which I think would really rock and appeal to Old School and younger/newer gamers as well.

With a small font like the 3e FRCS and 320 pages, I'm not sure you need a narrow focus!

I consider the 3e FRCS one of the best presentations of a campaign setting, especially a new edition of an existing setting, ever done. Even as someone who is not particularly a fan of FR, I was blown away by just how much that book manages to cram in.

And yet...

The fact that that book has such a density of text and such a large page count is also perhaps its biggest weakness also. There's just so much there that it can be overwhelming. I can't help but feel that a much smaller and lighter volume (actually, something like the 4e Eberron books (I don't have the 4e FR ones)) might be more approachable, if not better - what you lose in comprehensiveness, you gain in approachability.

Though maybe a "halfway house" is actually the best of both worlds - the dense, 320-page book for the dedicated fan, coupled with a 64ish page primer for the newcomer to the setting.

(I would be surprised if it was the format of the 4e books that was in any way to blame for what happened. It appears that the objection was to the content of the books, and specifically to the changes that had been wrought, and probably to the time jump more than anything else.)