I finally figured out what I dislike about 4E Forgotten Realms

[Mouseferatu]

The only problem is, in the FRCS, they lightly encourage you to not necessarily end your old campaign, and continue playing on from 1385 DR and work your way up to 1479 DR. But without more information, other than a very general overview, and absolutely no timeline of major events in those intervening 94 years, it's kind of hard to do this and avoid conflicts with future material covering this period.

Okay, that's a fair point. I didn't realize they were encouraging people to play through that period; I was thinking entirely in terms of campaigns that begin in the new age.

 

[El Mahdi]

Shroomy, could you post a link to that article or shoot me an email with it? I thought I had caught all of the preview and background articles but I must have missed this one. I already looked at the WoTC site and couldn't find it (some of there menus and archives just aren't what they need to be). Thanks in advance.

 

[Shroomy]

Shroomy, could you post a link to that article or shoot me an email with it? I thought I had caught all of the preview and background articles but I must have missed this one. I already looked at the WoTC site and couldn't find it (some of there menus and archives just aren't what they need to be). Thanks in advance.

Sure, the "Backdrop: Cormyr" article appeared in Dragon 365. Its by Brian James and is a great article. Here is the link to the individual article; if you want errata'd mechanics, you'll have to download the entire issue (its free, so what the heck, right!).

 

[El Mahdi]

Thanks again Shroomy. It's a pretty good article. Articles like this will fill in the gaps, I just don't want to have to wait for these little articles, and I definately don't like (or won't like) paying for them since I already paid $40 for the book. Grrrrrrr.

But thanks man. I appreciate the link.

 

[questing gm]

I pretty surprised that people are wanting to play the missing 100 years.

I got the impression that WoTC wanted us to play 4E FR and used the 100 years to justify the changes. So to me, the 100 years is something that should be ignored and completely irrelevant to what is happening in the present day of the campaign.

Originally Posted by El Mahdi
The only problem is, in the FRCS, they lightly encourage you to not necessarily end your old campaign, and continue playing on from 1385 DR and work your way up to 1479 DR. But without more information, other than a very general overview, and absolutely no timeline of major events in those intervening 94 years, it's kind of hard to do this and avoid conflicts with future material covering this period.

That is something disturbing but learning from my past mistakes of believing what is 'encouraged' when the designers tell you otherwise, is going to be a nightmare in terms of following FR canon. The 100 years are also probably going to be told in novels, which I had a very bad experience with when building campaigns.

If I were to run the 4E Realms, that 100 years is going to remain as the skeleton in the (campaign) closet.

 

[MerricB]

Perhaps your memory has slipped or you didn't play the modules, but PCs clearly could influence events by playing Cyric, Mystra, Kelemvor and others that would ascend in the Shadowdale/Tantras/Waterdeep trilogy. They were riddled with plothooks for crafty DMs who wanted players to play their own characters against the background of events, too.

Err... the Avatar series of modules was designed as a massive railroad, with the NPCs (Midnight, Cyric, et al.) being the stars and the PCs being spectators. The players don't get to play the stars unless the DM decides to be kind and rewrite the modules.

Not that I don't think some modules around the spellplague would have een nice or anything, but there are few modules I know that are more derided than the Avatar trilogy.

Cheers!

 

[Miyaa]

For about that's suppose to be an intro for a person who only knows about World of Warcraft-ish type of online games, the Forgotten Realms book is vastly empty. And having the subscription only online articles to give you more details about the past hundred years seems rather odd. It gives you two evil rituals, about ten magical items, mostly evil, and maybe five or six new foes to introduce to a party.

The book seems to focus on an introductory town and a very brief look at how the changes affected the pantheon (did they kill off Yondalla, the Goddess of the Halflings?) and the effects on the physical and geographic aspects of the realms (Evermeet, the only place I was ever interested in FR is now in Feyworld, and yet the Underdark didn't get sucked into the Shadowworld plane. Odd.), while spending almost no time on any of the notable persons in the realm. (I only knew about "Blackstaff's" passing through the online FR ad that Wizards is running.) I thought this was suppose to be an intro into the FR for the new people that Wizards was wanting to draw in, or is this part of a plan to shift the focus from FR to Eberron and what new campaign Wizards might be wanting to implement?

 

[The Little Raven]

The only problem is, in the FRCS, they lightly encourage you to not necessarily end your old campaign, and continue playing on from 1385 DR and work your way up to 1479 DR.

Actually, the section you're talking about (page 40) suggests you skip the intervening years by either putting them in stasis caused by the Spellplague, doing a slow-time portal that will bring them to the future, or have them play descendants of the characters, sworn to uphold their ancestor's legacy. There is no actual suggestion for you to play the intervening years in the book.

On the same track (although I said this in another thread), it kind of sucks to have paid almost $40 for THE sourcebook of this campaign, only to find out I have to get a DDI subscription to get the rest of the story (information that IMO, should have already been provided).

It's the DM sourcebook for the setting, not THE sourcebook (since there are two). And there's plenty of information to run a Realms game, if you're not fixated on knowing what kind of tea Azoun V enjoyed.

 

[Miyaa]

He probably liked Earl Grey.

 

[The Little Raven]

It gives you two evil rituals, about ten magical items, mostly evil, and maybe five or six new foes to introduce to a party.

You must be using some kind of state-of-the-art space-age math if you counted the number of new creatures given in the index on page 287 and came up with six at the most.

yet the Underdark didn't get sucked into the Shadowworld plane. Odd.)

A part of the physical world not being sucked into an entirely different plane of existence is odd? You do realize that the Underdark has no connection to the Shadowfell, right?

I thought this was suppose to be an intro into the FR for the new people that Wizards was wanting to draw in, or is this part of a plan to shift the focus from FR to Eberron and what new campaign Wizards might be wanting to implement?

Why do new DMs need to know what happened to Khelben Blackstaff over one hundred years ago? There are plenty of modern-day adventure hooks that don't require the presence of some author-favorite NPC.