Is it just me, or is evil winning in the Forgotten Realms?

[MetalBard]

The Roll of Years predicted much of it though.

As a boon, it does make for a more interesting campaign world to be a player in. After all, there's a bunch of stuff going on to keep the Big Guys busy, so you can feel significant in your slice of the world.

This was the stated design intention of Forgotten Realms for 3rd edition. It is in the FRCS and all of the designers said that that was their intention in the first place, to make the Realms a dangerous place again where the mighty have their own concerns and the need for heroes is greater than ever.

 

[orangefruitbat]

Well, I don't see how any of this made the drow stronger. Two major drow strongholds (Maermydia and I forget the other one) were pretty much annhiliated. Menzobezzaran was trashed pretty heavy. Lots of drow killed. Lots of slaves killed/escaped. Stores of magic depleted. Plus a major loss of prestige for the Lolth priestesshood. Social conflict between male and female drow. Heresies and competing religions.

[sblock]Lolth got pregnant and split herself into many small spiders, which caused her to go silent. She didn't bother to tell her clergy, who weren't too happy about this.

while other groups attacked cities loyal to Lolth*, the spiders ate each other. It was natural selection - for the strongest spiders, and then for those smart enough to hide their strength.

Eventually, the smartest spider somehow turned into a new deity or something like it (I haven't read the last one in the series, and I don't want to anyhow) just in time to save Menzo. Well, I think Lolth's clery did the actual saving, of course. Just what the Realms needed... another deity.[/sblock]

[sblock]*That series had some interesting drow characters (except Halistra, may she be sliced up by a confused Dalesman), but it still had the stereotypes of drow pulling everyone's strings (and if that's bad, what if they're half-dragons ), drow being so "scary" that dragons fear them, and drow being way more skilled than anyone else. Oh yeah, and any female drow exposed to a follower of Eilistraee becomes another follower of Eilistraee due to that weird E-virus. Even Danifae might fall for it, but I don't want to read the last book in the series for fear of being proved right.[/sblock]

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Well, I don't see how any of this made the drow stronger.

I didn't say the drow became stronger. I was simply complaining about the stereotypes and

Spoiler

possibly creating another deity

.

 

[Desdichado]

I've always had a tendency to read an FR book and say, "Wow, this can be a pretty dark setting." Old and new books alike.

Yeah, the potential was always there. As Faraer and some others have pointed out, I think Ed Greenwood's Realms is relatively dark.

But that wasn't always the case of official material coming out of TSR, and the "don't let evil win" memo from TSR's days seems to pretty much be an established fact.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

The Realms has ALWAYS had a balance of Good & Evil.

Just like Star Trek, SG-1, or any other TV series.

Ever notice that no matter how bad the 'Bad Guys' got stomped, they were right back there with a new 'Master Plan' in the next Book, Adventure, Supplement?

The Realms was stagnant, not 'Goody Two Shoes'. The Zhentarim could be nearly destroyed in one book, yet back to full strength the next (of course they get their backsides handed to them again).

Much like any long running TV show, the villians of the Forgotten Realms had to stick around. They wouldn't win, but they wouldn't 'lose' either (like the G'ould, Klingons, Romulans, etc).

The new, 'bad guys are winning' style of FR is sort of putting me off FR. It seems like after years of 'Good guys always win' they have gone the 'the Bad Guys are gonna win now!' Route.

As for all the new enemies? The lack of orginality is trully, trully unispiring. Shade Enclave? Try Borg, or the new replicants of SG-1.

Much like a long running TV show trying to re-invent itself, FR is trying the latest fad, meaner, grittier, nastier. (Like the last season of Andromeda). I expect a gangsta rap from Elminster any day (along with all his posse h*** of Mystra), rit on dawg!


The new, nasty Realms is just what a bunch of people with Marketing Degrees think people in Focus Groups want the FR to be.

FR is a D&D Sugar Daddy & WotC wants to squeeze every drop of cash they can out of it.

The new Realms isn't 'Evil' taking over, it's Market Executives.

Oh, I guess Real Evil is taking over the Realms then.

 

[Aidan mac Culloch]

I have to strongly disagree with you here, particularly on the Shades. They are probably my best villanous power group when I DM FR campaigns, which I do often. Shades have a rich history, clear motivation, the element of mystery, powerful magics...all things "good" evil organizations in FR should have.

Nothing scares my players more than when they are attacked out of the shadows by humanoids with ancient-looking gear and weaponry, who seem to prefer fighting at night. And the Shades close association with Netheril gives the players some interesting things to research and decipher when they aren't running for their lives.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

I have to strongly disagree with you here, particularly on the Shades. They are probably my best villanous power group when I DM FR campaigns, which I do often. Shades have a rich history, clear motivation, the element of mystery, powerful magics...all things "good" evil organizations in FR should have.

And that varies from the Borg or Replicants how?

Not saying they aren't GOOD villians. Just the technique of new, powerful villians from beyond has been done before.

I like the Shades. I've just seen them before in many different places, in many different guises. The Shade are a well done idea. But they are far from an original idea.

 

[Faraer]

Do the pre-2001 sources indicate a good-NPC-dominated Realms? The magazine articles and web material certainly don't. The sourcebooks portray a consistent picture of stalemate in which good and evil both rarely strike a decisive blow against the other, as could be seen simply from the fact that major good and evil institutions often endure over decades and centuries, and large shifts in the balance are rare. Cormyr: A Novel, Secrets of the Magister, Lands of Intrigue, all the books that give a historical overview show this clearly.

The usual insinuation is that it's the novels that show the Realms to be good-dominated. It's true that the protagonists in Realms novels tend to succeed rather than fail, but that's the case in commercial fiction of all kinds, Code of Ethics or no. Nothing indicates protagonist-invulnerability that has anything to do with the setting rather than the publishing program; on the contrary, characters are frequently outwitted and wounded, and sometimes killed (including Shandril Shessair and Azoun IV). Let's take Elminster and the Seven Sisters, the most often cited 'culprits'. Can you name a dozen instances of them defeating an evil plot? Not in the minor appearances in the Shandril books, Avatar trilogy, and Rise of the Archwizards. A couple in Shadow of the Avatar, one in Stormlight, one in Silverfall -- though, as often, what's reached there is merely stalemate, not victory for good. The pre-3E Elminster novels are set centuries in the past and feature a good deal of Elminster being manipulated as well as triumphing. Some more instances in short stories and scattered references. But if you could name a hundred such instances, there are that many evil plots afoot in Faerûn every month. There are many sources which illustrate this density: the years'-events in the 1987 and 1993 sets, the Harper's year in FOR4, all the scattered current clack and the hundreds of unsolved plots that the Volo's Guides and other good sourcebooks are layered with, many of the wizards.com "Realmslore" series. Drizzt's adventures, meanwhile, take place in what is effectively a sub-setting that impinges little on the Realms at large. Neither have I seen an argument that the Realms turns significantly towards good, novel events included, between 1360 and 1370 DR.

Though we can't know what D&Ders have thought and experienced about the Realms, if it was a real problem that the good NPCs don't leave anything for the PCs to do, someone would have actually experienced PC-usurpation in a campaign where it wasn't transparently due to bad DMing. But over several years and many, many threads I've read of only a few 'bad DMing'-type cases and not a single one that seemed due, or was seriously argued to be due, to the setting itself. Based on everything I know, then, it's not a real problem, but a purely notional one. Of course, even if this idea was as widespread as you suggest, that doesn't mean there's anything in it. All sorts of falsehoods are commonly believed; the fact that ideas vary so much between different places and times shows that.

I see, in some cases, why people might get the wrong idea. The Code of Ethics had its effect. Too much about the Realms is unpublished or between-the-lines, due to both the books and the game departments' sometimes insulting ideas of what people want to read. The books department's preference for lone heroes over adventuring companies is misleading. It should be made more explicit that the published events, characters, organizations and settlements are a sampling, often a cursory sampling, of what's there. But I've seen nothing that suggests NPCs-do-everything is any kind of serious idea. As I said above, it just isn't possible given the published numbers of characters, known relationships and duties, scale of geography, and density of events. It's usually heard, instead, as glib, supercilious innuendo which too many people don't know better than to perpetuate.

(And this is without any subtle inference, and without the hundreds of thousands of words of -- canonical -- web-posted lore that in the last few years have filled in details and underpinnings of the Realms not yet made explicit in print.)

 

[Faraer]

Sorry, but Rich Baker refuted this statement on the WotC boards. This is either no longer true, or it was never true to begin with.

He said he wasn't aware of it, not that he'd looked into it and found it not to be so.

 

[Turhan]

I see a lot of people in this thread have played in the FR and some of you sound to be very knowledgeable.

I’m considering moving my home brew campaign away from my world and into the FR or Ebberon.

I’ve played the many FR computer games (still play Neverwinter Nights), and read maybe 30-35 of the novels, and I have the huge poster maps on my wall. I like the idea of the Realms, but I wonder if any of you have experience with moving from an “old” world into the FR with your game group.

Can you give me any stories of the problems or pitfalls of such a move? Do advise for or against it?

As a back drop for my decision, let me say that I made my own world based on standard 2E DnD back in ’99 and we’ve played 80% of our games in my world ever since. I’m presently DMing our 4th campaign in the world, but in a very different location and time from where we started. The present campaign is going well (after about 2 years, with a break for some Star Wars d20) but I am thinking a change would be good.