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Is it just me, or is evil winning in the Forgotten Realms?
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<blockquote data-quote="Faraer" data-source="post: 2392464" data-attributes="member: 6318"><p>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. <em>Cormyr: A Novel</em>, <em>Secrets of the Magister</em>, <em>Lands of Intrigue</em>, all the books that give a historical overview show this clearly.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>Stormlight</em>, one in <em>Silverfall</em> -- 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 <em>month</em>. 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 <em>Volo's Guide</em>s 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.</p><p></p><p>Though we can't <em>know</em> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>(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.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Faraer, post: 2392464, member: 6318"] 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. [i]Cormyr: A Novel[/i], [i]Secrets of the Magister[/i], [i]Lands of Intrigue[/i], 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 [i]Stormlight[/i], one in [i]Silverfall[/i] -- 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 [i]month[/i]. 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 [i]Volo's Guide[/i]s 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 [i]know[/i] 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.) [/QUOTE]
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