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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faraer" data-source="post: 3655879" data-attributes="member: 6318">I'm far from an apologist for TSR! I dislike many aspects of how they handled the Realms, including the Time of Troubles, just as you do. What I'm talking about is something that Ed stressed consistently and TSR usually downplayed, except a few specific cases when they did want to take advantage of it to cover glitches, such as with FR5.How am I overlooking that by reinforcing ruleslawyer's point that ironically the canon-lawyering you mention is alien to the spirit and, often, the explicit advice of the sources that bear that 'canon'?I'm not talking about unpublished works, but the Dragon articles where the Realms saw print, which presented themselves not as god's-eye truth but as gossip passed to Ed by inhabitants of Faerûn, who would sometimes point out each other's unreliability! Both before and after 1987, and because of both their fallibility and their agendas. I can give quotes if you like.So how do you interpret my quote, the advice in the DM's Sourcebook that NPC levels should be changed to suit campaign needs and foil players who 'read too much', FR2 Moonshae being 'written by' Flamsterd, FR5 The Savage Frontier by Amelior Amanitas, and other information framed as relayed via Realms folk, the frequent explicit casting of information in terms of 'it is rumored' or 'it is thought', the clear (even heavy-handed) emphasis on Volo's untrustworthiness (OK, 2E)? Not to mention Ed's own comments, which you have no reason to doubt, and which are plainly made to encourage creativity, not to excuse anything. The pre-Avatar Crisis sources, mostly (in the conceit) imparted via Elminster, are largely consistent with themselves (though the freelancer problem had started by then, as it happens) because the point of this device is to support DM invention, not to confuse those DMs who do want to use the material as-is more often that not.Outside the narration mode, many things like the full roster of the Lords of Waterdeep and the working of gates were left undefined similarly to counter players trying to compel the DM to what they'd read.</blockquote>

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