Keep your filthy points of light away from me!

[catsclaw227]

Really, this idea needs to be put to bed. You need ONE Book to play in the Realms. Repeat after me. ONE. That book is the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Everything else is entirely optional.

This is easy to say, and a lot harder to do. On two occasions I have attempted to put together a FR campaign where one or two of the players were FR fans, reading the novels and having lots of books. I am not a FR expert and I used the FRCS as my campaign guide, along with a couple of the 3.x sourcebooks.

Fun was NOT had by all at the table. I was unintentionally doing things that contradicted canon in the books. The PLAYERS weren't having fun because they felt like I was unintentionally cheating the setting, and in both cases, we decided to play a different campaign setting.

Canon from novels can, in some cases, ruin a setting for a DM. It has for me. Twice. I don't want to DM it now, not because I don't like the ideas, but because there's too much history to learn and I am not fond of reading FR novels.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Canon from novels can, in some cases, ruin a setting for a DM.

I agree, I think all D&D campaign settings should be static, so some author or adventure writer (Faction War, anyone?) doesn't come along and blow things out of the water (ruin the setting).

 

[Uzzy]

Fun was NOT had by all at the table. I was unintentionally doing things that contradicted canon in the books. The PLAYERS weren't having fun because they felt like I was unintentionally cheating the setting, and in both cases, we decided to play a different campaign setting.

I don't get it. I mean, seriously, did players such as these have trouble accepting slight differences to the Canon? Couldn't they discuss these deviations with you in an adult manner? I'm interested in what the scale of these unintentional differences were too. Was it something like 'Oh, Waterdeep doesn't exist' or 'No, Alusair's hair is red, not blonde!'?

I don't think such occurances are the fault of the setting. I think they are the fault of players unwilling to compromise, or accept that it's the DM's game.

 

[catsclaw227]

I don't get it. I mean, seriously, did players such as these have trouble accepting slight differences to the Canon? Couldn't they discuss these deviations with you in an adult manner? I'm interested in what the scale of these unintentional differences were too. Was it something like 'Oh, Waterdeep doesn't exist' or 'No, Alusair's hair is red, not blonde!'?

I don't think such occurances are the fault of the setting. I think they are the fault of players unwilling to compromise, or accept that it's the DM's game.

I am not expecting you to understand the details, nor am I expecting you to "get it" when it came to how the canon messed up our game. You have had a different experience. I am not even trying to convince you one way or the other. I am simply saying that a RESET would be good for me and my players. They are FR geeks extraordinaire, and they even think the setting needs it. Too much bulk.

The players were good players (and I consider myself a good DM), they were compromising, but it wasn't as FUN for everyone as it could have been. Note that this was 2 1/2 years ago, so I don't remember all the details, but I wasn't making major changes like Waterdeep didn't exist.

For example, I had a major city leader assassinated and unfortunately, he was responsible for some major stuff in the books (I don't remember who or how the story went, I didn't read the books), and it sorta killed some of the history for the two FR lore experts in my game, because it created a ripple effect.

 

[carmachu]

If you think about it, lots of people on this board spent the last 10 years bitching about FR ("why doesn't elminster just solve the problem himself?" "why is FR so full of ultrapowerful good organizations and feeble evil ones?" ). I'm hopeful that the changes they envision may go a long way towards resolving some of the concerns of FR detractors like myself.

While I feel for the FR fans withthe huge shake up.....the above is the real problem with FR. Why the hell do you want to adventure there when There is elminster, the seven sisters, blackstaff, the simbul and her realm, the harpers and a host of other powerful good organizations? There's no purpose to being a hero there....They pretty well had the bad guys in check, if not on the run most of the time.

The shake up might make me check it out.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I don't get it. I mean, seriously, did players such as these have trouble accepting slight differences to the Canon? Couldn't they discuss these deviations with you in an adult manner? I don't think such occurances are the fault of the setting. I think they are the fault of players unwilling to compromise, or accept that it's the DM's game.

Obviously you've never dealt with a fandom player. Try playing Serenity with a Browncoat, or Buffy with a junior Watcher. Trust me, it sucks. There are many people who treat canon as holy and get bent out of shape over deviations. How bent out of shape depends on the person but some of them can get seriously upset over the piddliest things.

I'm only going to point out that pretty much every good setting starts out as a "point of light" campaign. Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Darksun (more Points of "dim" in the dark), Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Earthdawn, WW's old WoD, Rifts, Twilight 2000, heck, even Synnibar was a "PoL" setting.

Does it suck for FR people that WotC's exercising their perogative to change the setting? Yeah, sure. But at least they're jumping things forward 100 years, ToT was pretty harsh. And for the people who bemoan the lack of a 3e version of certain cities, c'mon, really? Setting material is pretty system agnostic. If you can't live without the update when there isn't a RSE, are you sure you aren't one of those fandom players that drives many DMs nuts?

 

[BBQ]

I actually enjoy the idea that there aren't a lot of uber-powerful characters running around, slinging world breaking spells about. In my own setting, the player's characters have become the high-level NPCs, and now, as the new edition is coming up, we're already working and preparing to make it so that while the 1e, 2e, and 3e characters are going to still either be legendary within the world or still be around, after a fashion, the new characters will not be barred from becoming the big movers and shakers. For example, my world's "Gandalf" or "Merlin" figure is still around, but his circumstances have changed. Characters don't exist in a vaccuum. As the world changes, so to do the characters.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

There are many people who treat canon as holy and get bent out of shape over deviations. How bent out of shape depends on the person but some of them can get seriously upset over the piddliest things.

There's always the option of not playing with people like that.

I used to be a big Realms fan, and knew a lot (read all the novels and so on). And of course most DMs would do things that were not like they were "supposed to be". If it was something trivial, it didn't matter at all to me. If it was bigger, I told the DM, in a couple of words, a sentence or two, what the canon says about it. If he decided to go along, fine. If he had parts of his campaign dependant on things going the way he wanted them to go and not according to canon, I wasn't upset, either. As long as I know how things are in the campaign, I'm okay with mods. The only exceptions are if things I really like aren't used.

 

[catsclaw227]

If he had parts of his campaign dependant on things going the way he wanted them to go and not according to canon, I wasn't upset, either. As long as I know how things are in the campaign, I'm okay with mods. The only exceptions are if things I really like aren't used.

What if he had things in his campaign that excluded something you really liked, but it was important to his campaign? How would that be handled?

 

[fanboy2000]

There's always the option of not playing with people like that.

True. But if I can have fun playing in a different setting, I play in a different setting. I would only drop the players if I couldn't have fun in any other setting. The setting is only one part of the whole gaming experience.