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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 2386507" data-attributes="member: 14159">Yeah, I remember that the big ads for 3e Forgotten Realms had a picture of a menacing looking red wizard (the same art they later put in the 3.5 DMG I think) and a tagline of "Evil is everywhere, and it's spreading".  For a long time, the villains of the Realms were inept almost to the point of comedy.  The Thayans would begin yet another predictable military campaign and be thwarted almost like clockwork.  The Cult of the Dragon sat around doing dark rituals, but not too much happened, and a nice big stable of famous NPC's came around for the regularly scheduled thwarting of the villains.Now they killed off Azoun, have some of the big names retiring or semi-retiring from old age, or having their own political problems of being major national leaders coming up.  It gives more room for PC's to work with, and the villains aren't constrained by the goody-two-shoes TSR mentality, which made it all seem reminiscent of the old Comics Code (could you imagine TSR publishing the BoVD, or putting in Realms-specific Vile material into the PGtF?).So yes, evil is winning now, but they haven't been allowed to before.  Eventually the good guys will pull it out, more or less, but evil is being allowed to be Evil, and good guys are being allowed to make mistakes.</blockquote>