Have you been disillusioned by the Forgotten Realms?

[Desdichado]

Somebody pissed in J.D.'s wheaties this morning! Great thing about the internet is that we can say some things a certain way without risk of getting punched in the mouth.

Huh? I'd say the same to anyone who made such a bad start at presenting their argument over the Internet or anywhere else. I don't think my reply was particularly pissy; the statement I quoted was incorrect (and irrevelent; all it really did was set up the straw man that nobody had argued for just so he could tear it down and claim "victory" over a position that nobody was arguing.)

Why single out FR? Lots of different campaign settings do this.

That is true; FR isn't even necessarily the worst (Sovereign Stone probably takes that cake and eats it too; which it's welcome to.) But FR is more famous and more notorious for just jamming in whatever real-world culture a particular author was interested in, filing off the serial numbers, and plonking it down somewhere in the Realms without any regard for how these various cultures would interact with each other. Ancient Egyptians (Mulhorand), Mongols (the Horde) feudal England (the Dales, other areas) and others just all sit next to each other. How did these real-world cultures that in our world were separated by miles and miles of distance and centuries and centuries of time all get to where they are, and why hasn't there been any adaptation based on their neighbors? And why do they all have an overlay of liberal Canadian modernism?

Besides, the thread is about FR; why would I specifically bring up other settings that do that when FR is already the topic we're discussing?

 

[Faraer]

Yes, lots do it, not least Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age.

But the core Realms, from the Sword Coast to Thay in the east and the Shining Sea and Halruaa in the south, is not at all this kind of Earth-pastiche patchwork, but a vividly worked-out continuum of political, historical, cultural and magical forces. This main part of Faerûn, in which most campaigns are set, doesn't use Earth analogues and certainly does make sense, to use Joshua's terms. The problems come with the (literally) marginal sub-settings added onto the Realms by TSR; the Old Empires are a middle ground, with the published nations established in FR10 Old Empires being rather more Egyptian/Sumerian/Greeklike than in the original Realms. (The Dales aren't feudal, by the way.)

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

A fair amount of this hodge podge comes not from Greenwood, but from the dozen plus of others who have worked on F.R. books over the past 15 to 20 years, in addition to changes in management. Greenwood apparently explored little outside of Cormyr, the Dalelands, Waterdeep and a handful of other locations.

 

[Arnwyn]

My vote was a tentative "no" - not disillusioned. My more accurate answer would be: "only when the wretched gawd-awful FR novels stick their ugly noses into the game/campaign material". Then I get very disillusioned.

How do you feel about the setting now, and why do you feel that way?

About the same as I always have - sometimes happy, sometimes disappointed.

Are you as happy with it as you are Greyhawk and Eberron, the other two supported settings?

Moreso.

Are you as happy with it as you used to be?

If Serpent Kingdoms and Shining South had never come out, then my answer would be "unequivocally NO". However, these two books have certainly made me as happy with the Realms as I've ever been.

 

[Desdichado]

But the core Realms, from the Sword Coast to Thay in the east and the Shining Sea and Halruaa in the south, is not at all this kind of Earth-pastiche patchwork, but a vividly worked-out continuum of political, historical, cultural and magical forces. This main part of Faerûn, in which most campaigns are set, doesn't use Earth analogues and certainly does make sense, to use Joshua's terms. The problems come with the (literally) marginal sub-settings added onto the Realms by TSR; the Old Empires are a middle ground, with the published nations established in FR10 Old Empires being rather more Egyptian/Sumerian/Greeklike than in the original Realms. (The Dales aren't feudal, by the way.)

Yeah, I'll concede that that's a valid point; the "core" FR isn't nearly as patchwork as the mess 2e made of the Realms. Then again, the 2e Realms was the well-known one, so that's largely where my "disillusionment" with the Realms is founded. I have to doff my hats to the 3e Realms authors who took what had become quite a mess and turned out a fairly interesting setting out of it. Whereas before I would never have touched the Realms, even as a player, I'm intrigued by some of the campaign opportunities present nowadays. It's fair to say my disillusionment with the Realms has been significantly abated in recent years.

I'd love to be a player in a campaign that used The Unapproachable East as required reading, for example.

 

[Faraer]

A fair amount of this hodge podge comes not from Greenwood, but from the dozen plus of others who have worked on F.R. books over the past 15 to 20 years, in addition to changes in management. Greenwood apparently explored little outside of Cormyr, the Dalelands, Waterdeep and a handful of other locations.

The highest density of detail -- millions of words, most still unpublished -- is for the places Ed's main campaigns were/are set: the Company of Crazed Venturers in Waterdeep and the Sword Coast North, and the Knights of Myth Drannor, mostly in Cormyr and the Dales. The rest of the Heartlands also had a lot of detail. Places further out such as Amn, Tethyr, Calimshan, the Vilhon Reach, Impiltur, Aglarond and Thay were, largely, mysterious foreign parts encountered mostly via travellers, but even so received plenty of attention by non-Realms standards. You have to go pretty far afield (except for the Bedine of Anauroch) to find the places that TSR heavily tampered with.

 

[Mystery Man]

Huh? I'd say the same to anyone who made such a bad start at presenting their argument over the Internet or anywhere else. I don't think my reply was particularly pissy; the statement I quoted was incorrect (and irrevelent; all it really did was set up the straw man that nobody had argued for just so he could tear it down and claim "victory" over a position that nobody was arguing.)

What I meant by that was...why bother with a rebut. In short.


Comparing the Realms with real world historical analogy does it a disservice IMO and ruins the immersivity (<---I just made up a word I think!) of the setting.

 

[Desdichado]

Comparing the Realms with real world historical analogy does it a disservice IMO and ruins the immersivity (<---I just made up a word I think!) of the setting.

Well, the immersivity is even more ruined by areas in the Realms that you can't help comparing to real world history/culture because the correspondences are so transparent. IMO.

 

[Mystery Man]

Well, the immersivity....

It's catching on!

 

[Desdichado]

It's catching on!

That word is so anime.