[FRealms] Change in tone from 1E to 2E?

[Lanefan]

The thing that annoys me about how FR changed from 1e to 2e to 3e is how much more "developed" things get. On the 1e map there's some towns, a few roads, some landforms and forests, and not much else. On the 2e map there's more roads and towns, more fine-tuning of the landforms, etc. On the 3e map there's loads more roads and towns and a lot less quasi-blank and-or wild space to put fun things (e.g. adventures) in. Me, I'd rather just have the basics, with lots of room for my own designs in between.

That said, the 3e FR source book really is well done.

Lanefan

 

[Wik]

I never saw 1e realms, and I had no interest in 3e realms, for many of the reasons Lanefan already mentioned (just too much detail!).

2e realms was, um, okay. I guess. I did like some of the Dalelands, and I ran a campaign based around Feather Falls and Sembia for quite some time. But that's neither here nor there.

One thing that irked me about the Realms (still does) is the abundance of high level NPCs. I think Eberron has done a much beter job, where NPCs that run flying fortresses and whatnot are still only 4th level. Great stuff.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

I remember when the 1st Edition Grey Box Forgotten Realms came out; and then the 2nd edition, and now the recent incarnations. The Grey Box was *outstanding*. Contrary to many critiques of FR nowadays--the Grey Box was stylistically closer to Greyhawk than it has since become, much to many people's chagrin. The Grey Box was tantalizing, rough, mysterious. The campaign setting screamed for the DM to develop all kinds of things, either from scratch--or from things only hinted at in the Grey Box. The Grey Box was full of unanswered questions, snippets of rumours, only names and a brief description of a character's goals or history or plans, and little else. There were not stables and stables of uber-powerful NPC's seemingly doing everything. In fact, the Grey Box often gave the impression of a rugged, strange campaign world that was largely overwhelmed by either powerful monsters, ancient enemies, or massive hordes of evil humanoids.

A perfect world to set a campaign in!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Voadam]

I believe superpowerful in your face NPCs have been there since the beginning.

In the first FR story by Greenwood the hero is a powerful conan rip off warrior who disrupts some villains who were under surveillance by Elminster and the Symbul who end up revealing themselves and outclassing the hero with their overwhelming magical power.

The 1e grey box campaign setting's sample adventure has an insane lich archmage with custom 9th level spells that the low level party (1st?) actually interacts with.

 

[Faraer]

Whereas 2E seems more "in your face" with gods walking the earth, epic battles, Mongol hordes, NPCs that seem more like superheroes than strange background figures.

That's the influence of the novels, especially the Realms-Shattering Events beginning with the Avatar trilogy, and the books department's favouring of high-level characters; and also of TSR often treating the Realms as a dumping ground rather than a setting with integrity, and using some poorly chosen freelancers. All this affected the way the Realms was presented much more than the underlying setting.

At the same time, in the 1990s Ed Greenwood kept writing the same great material he always had, such as the FOR series and the Volo's Guides. Ed's Realms work is consistent in spirit from the 1980s Dragon articles through his latest writing.

The late 1990s saw the period of Steven Schend and Eric Boyd, who were the first sourcebook authors other than Ed and Jeff Grubb to consistently get the Realms right in tone and detail.

The 3E sourcebooks are mostly by multiple authors (and try to deliver a quota of sometimes gratuitous game-mechanical information); thus they're all better than the worst 1990s duds, certainly better researched, but they're also often bitty, rarely matching the depth and coherence of the best earlier single-author works.

The thing that annoys me about how FR changed from 1e to 2e to 3e is how much more "developed" things get.

Well, that detail (and scores of boxes of papers more) always existed, it just took a while to publish. Some love it, others prefer not to use it. Similarly, festhalls were mentioned but not detailed in the early overviews.

Why is it called the forgotten Realms, someone once told me that there were portals which lead there and these were "forgotten". Is that right?

Yes (Grimstaff is mistaken here). Ed:

This, by the way, is where the “Forgotten” part of “Forgotten Realms” came from: we people of real-world Earth have ‘forgotten’ the once-widely-used gates to Toril, which gave us our legends of vampires, dragons, et al.

One thing that irked me about the Realms (still does) is the abundance of high level NPCs.

There's no particular abundance when you take into account the size of the lands and populations; they've just been overexposed.

The 1e grey box campaign setting's sample adventure has an insane lich archmage with custom 9th level spells that the low level party (1st?) actually interacts with.

Those adventures are for mid-level PCs.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The 1e grey box campaign setting's sample adventure has an insane lich archmage with custom 9th level spells that the low level party (1st?) actually interacts with.

Well, that adventure has less to do with him being superpowerful and more to do with an unusual plot device; namely, that PCs have to run around the "dungeon" and deal with the other threats present while keeping up the lich's delusion that they're his apprentices or servants. It's quite a fun adventure, actually.

 

[Nebulous]

Greetings!

I remember when the 1st Edition Grey Box Forgotten Realms came out; and then the 2nd edition, and now the recent incarnations. The Grey Box was *outstanding*. Contrary to many critiques of FR nowadays--the Grey Box was stylistically closer to Greyhawk than it has since become, much to many people's chagrin. The Grey Box was tantalizing, rough, mysterious. The campaign setting screamed for the DM to develop all kinds of things, either from scratch--or from things only hinted at in the Grey Box. The Grey Box was full of unanswered questions, snippets of rumours, only names and a brief description of a character's goals or history or plans, and little else. There were not stables and stables of uber-powerful NPC's seemingly doing everything. In fact, the Grey Box often gave the impression of a rugged, strange campaign world that was largely overwhelmed by either powerful monsters, ancient enemies, or massive hordes of evil humanoids.

A perfect world to set a campaign in!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Agreed! I had the gray box and it was exactly like that. It was my favorite setting for many years until the WAVE of high level NPC's, too many plot hooks and too much detail soured my love of the Realms. i'll always enjoy it though, and as a DM, it is still ridiculously easy to just take a small piece of a map and make a whole campaign from it.

I also have Atlas of the Forgotten Realms CD that has some of the coolest maps to print (and edit) that i've seen. They're not as high quality as modern cartography maps in 3rd edition, but they get the job done.

 

[green slime]

Greetings!

I remember when the 1st Edition Grey Box Forgotten Realms came out; and then the 2nd edition, and now the recent incarnations. The Grey Box was *outstanding*. Contrary to many critiques of FR nowadays--the Grey Box was stylistically closer to Greyhawk than it has since become, much to many people's chagrin. The Grey Box was tantalizing, rough, mysterious. The campaign setting screamed for the DM to develop all kinds of things, either from scratch--or from things only hinted at in the Grey Box. The Grey Box was full of unanswered questions, snippets of rumours, only names and a brief description of a character's goals or history or plans, and little else. There were not stables and stables of uber-powerful NPC's seemingly doing everything. In fact, the Grey Box often gave the impression of a rugged, strange campaign world that was largely overwhelmed by either powerful monsters, ancient enemies, or massive hordes of evil humanoids.

A perfect world to set a campaign in!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Agreed! That grey box was full of nasty plots, evil doers, and the feeling of civilisation under siege, which contrasts rather drastically with "canon 2e's" impression of Evil being conquered by NPCs at their slightest inconvenience.

 

[Gold Roger]

Interesting, this threat prompted me to take a look and it turns out I actually own the original (german) 1st edition FR boxed set. I always thought it was the 2nd edition one.

 

[Korgoth]

Interesting replies, all. I guess it wasn't my imagination. Actually, this has helped me formulate my assessment of the differences between FR 1e and 2e.

The points about happy fantasy and evil being a whipping boy are well taken. It seems like the "good work" of FR is largely finished in 2e... Evil is basically whupped (by the goodly and nigh-invincible NPCs, so many in number that they have their own unions) and in tatters. All that appears to remain for the PCs is to mop up the kobolds who were beneath the god-like notice of the Big Bad Good Guys. Of course that's a drastic oversimplification, but one does get that impression.