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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 2390663" data-attributes="member: 14159">Here's the big secret:The Forgotten Realms isnt' Ed Greenwood's Personal World anymore.It hasn't been for almost 20 years now, yes it was his creation originally.  Much like Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms has changed in ways the original creator never intended, but it happens.  Eberron will probably change in ways Keith Baker never saw coming and wouldn't agree with either.  That's what happens when a world created by one person becomes a world written by many over a long time.In Ed Greenwood's Realms, the gods are non-anthropomorphic entities that might not even be real, polyamory is a cultural norm, and not much outside the heartlands even is known to exist.  The Realms were originally created by Ed, yes and most certainly he deserves respect for what he has done.  The world bears his fingerprints, again most certainly, and his statements carry some weight.  But the "official" Realms bears little resemblance to his primary works and style of the Realms, and just because he says something does not make it absolute canon.  They changed with the Time of Troubles, they changed with many of the novels that came afterwards, and they've Now, Ed's notes are very useful for inspiration and ideas I'll admit. I even made the entire plot of my campaign based on some of his writings (Larloch trying to build a portal network around Faerun to control everybody with), but when he says something, and everything else appears to say something else, I'll go with the preponderance of evidence.You know there was something seriously wrong with the world when back in the 2e days, most gaming groups I knew of were one of three types:1. Playing in the Realms, either as a default or because they loved it.2. Playing in another world, and refusing to play the Realms because they hated it, usually because they felt that uber NPC's meant there was no reason to adventure ("An ancient lich is going to try and destroy the kingdom, we were going to go stop him, but then Elminster came along and stopped him for us").3. Playing in the Realms, playing villains going around killing the famous NPC's (I saw a disturbing number of Evil campaigns run by many different GM's of: Let's get high level then go kill Elminster!")Even if, big if, by a careful analysis of all the novels, sourcebooks, materials, Ed's notes and such you could prove that there was some giant cosmic balance of law and chaos, good and evil that meant that no one side ever won too much, almost nobody noticed it.  To the vast majority of the gaming public, the Realms has seemed in the past to be a "Good Guys Always Win" world, and the 3e Realms toned that down, and made it so PC's could take the spotlight and save the day.  It's not presumed that every threat will be neatly and regularly taken care of by a big roster of great heroes.  They're still out there, but they're pretty busy, and sometimes evil slips through the cracks.(Now, I don't like everything about 3e Realms, I'll say that the new cosmology is nonsense and I'm sticking with the Great Wheel like it's supposed to be.)</blockquote>

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