Have you been disillusioned by the Forgotten Realms?

[Ralif Redhammer]

This more or less sums up my opinion. It had a wonderful atmosphere of discovery and magic. But after many years of playing there, it's worn a little thin, and I've since departed for homebrew territories.

I am contemplating using the wonderful item and spell sourcebook, The Magister, for C&C, though.

I do like the 3e core campaign setting book, but have grown leery of all the additional, overpriced books. I could do with not so much less crunch, but less crunch in the same darn format each time, and more emphasis on the world detail and adventure seeds.

I like the 1e FR. Basically the grey boxed set, and some of the first few supplements, and early Dragon magazine articles. I love that wide-open uncluttered feeling...

 

[Faraer]

Always loved the Realms, the unfolding of Realmslore, new stories and little histories and customs and connections I hadn't realized before. Very mixed feelings about how it's been presented by TSR and Wizards of the Coast.

 

[smootrk]

The deities are bit overboard. Other than that major aspect, I thoroughly love the FR. It really has something for everyone (something that some don't want, apparently).

As a DM for a FR Campaign, I do not find it difficult at all to find areas that I can make 'my own', even within the areas that have entire books devoted to the region.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions on settings, homebrew or otherwise, but FR has more interest for me than the other settings available, while still keeping the basic D&D flavor. GH is a tad too bland for my taste, Eberron is too far in the other extreme, and I never much liked any of the other variants (Athas, Krynn, Spelljamming, etc).

But I like many aspects of just about every setting that has been produced. There have been many aspects of Eberron that I like very much and 'import' into my campaign to further make it my own.

 

[The Shadow]

I've never believed in using someone else's setting; I make my own. But I'm not above mining products for ideas...

I really liked the original FR. Greenwood's attention to detail was something I actually appreciated, since I felt no need to remember it all and use it exactly. And he created a zestful, interesting world that hung together.

The Time of Troubles stuff turned me completely off. Yuck. I hate the very idea of canonical metaplot, thankyouverymuch.

I took a peek in the 3e FRCS, though, and was very pleasantly surprised. There's some really nice stuff in there.

So for me, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster!

 

[Ysgarran]

As a source of ideas I have been happy to buy the FR books and page through them. I have run games set in the North and the area of waterdeep. The campaign ignored everything else the FR world and was pretty heavily modified.

FR has always seem to have a very patchwork feel to it. Kind of like a giant quilt that has been thrown together and where the stitching isn't very tight.

Just MHO,
Ysgarran.

 

[Thundering_Dragon]

I still consider Forgotten Realms the best campaign setting out there. For me, the more detail, the better. I can always modify or remove anything I don't like, and I get a good deal that I do like. The NPCs never disturbed me, and they only overshadow the PCs if you want them to.

 

[The_Gneech]

Disillusioned? Nope. FR is a decent setting. There are pieces I like better than others ... my particular beef with it is its kinda Disneyland feel (it seems like every town has a random mix of humanoids and often quite a few 'civilized' monsters). But it's pretty much always been like that, so I can hardly say I'm disillusioned about it.

I can enjoy a game set there, although I'd generally prefer Greyhawk.

(I'd prefer Hyboria to Greyhawk, for that matter, but that's not the most D&D-friendly setting.)

-The Gneech

 

[Jdvn1]

We actually got the total number of deities down to about 40 (from the 120-odd we have now), but we finally decided that it would freak out too many people and didn't do it

Gotta rock the boat, man! I'm drowning in deities!

 

[Desdichado]

I went other, because I felt wrong saying "No" when I was never that deeply into it in the first place.

I picked yes, although I was also never that deeply into it. I read some of the early novels, thought that the setting had promise, and then became very disenchanted over the years with what I did see of it (although keep in mind that I wasn't playing D&D at the time, and so my exposure to it wasn't all that heavy.)

The 3e FR book was actually pretty nice, though--made some serious improvements to the setting, IMO. But not enough to remove the general level of disillusionment over it.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I think of it as a kind of tool-box setting. A very elaborate tool-box setting. With a tool box, you need a screwdriver, you grab the screw driver and ignore the hammer, tape-measure and so forth. With an elaborate tool box, you need a screwdriver, you grab the kind of screw driver you need.

Likewise, with the F.R. setting if you want a traditional fantasy kingdom setting or small village, with nefarious villains, you go to Cormyr or the Dalelands. You want an urban setting with nefarious villains, you go to Waterdeep. You want snake villains, you’ve got naga, yuan-ti, etc. You want cultists, you’ve got church of Bane, Shar, Cyric, Cult of the Dragon, etc.

It’s a big, extremely elaborate tool box. Take what you need. Ignore the rest.