Let's Forget the Forgotten Realms

[Nebulous]

ok, my 2 cents. The old FR Gray box was the first setting i ever bought, and i loved it to death. So we gamed in the FR for many years. I had the GH boxed set too but never played there, but i MASSIVELY enjoyed Gary's Gord books, and to this day I still like them. I loved the DL novels very much, up through Legends, but i never played in that setting either. Don't think i would want to.

I don't mind the FR being the core setting in 5e, but i don't really care what they use, so long as it is pseudo-medieval. GH would have been even better because i know so little about it.

One thing they could do, MAYBE, with the FR, is to transport us back 1000 or 2000 or 5000 years, and give us the state of the world at that time, and then fans of the setting will know what the Realms will evolve into. Just a thought.

 

[Herschel]

I like the Realms, pre- and post-spellplague. I like the characters (well a bunch of 'em anyway) but I like they shake things up because I felt it got bloated. That means some favorite characters go to the wayside and I'm okay with that. I don't need to visit Azoun for a royal charter with every character in every edition set in the Realms. If I want to, I can run every campaign that way because lord knows there's enough stuff to do so and conversion is pretty easy.

I'm not a big Greyhawk guy, but I appreciate it. I've never really played in it so all my experience is as an observer.

I love Dark Sun, Spelljammer, etc. One of teh reasons I so love 2E is because of the settings. I really do like them all.

Well, except Dragonlance though, DL is for ninnies.

 

[Morrus]

On reflection, given that this is an opinion piece rather than actual news or a review, I'll slip it into the 5E forum.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I wish for a setting that can be summed up in this word:

Classic

That is if Ravenloft is gothic, Dragonlance is epic and Eberron is pulp. I'm sure some people think Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are classic but I'm not sure I agree. Greyhawk is quirky with all the silly names and crashed space ships. Forgotten Realms was always full of hot air, to me. The setting and it's characters were always toted by the writers as the greatest stuff ever. I find it hard to love arrogance. Elminster and Drizzt, while cool, were accompanied by a PR-people following them around and trying to one up everything and anything. If someone said that Superman could outrun a bullet FR would say "That's nothing! Elminster can outrun two bullets!"

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I shared Morrus' view of FR for a long time (well, except about Dragonlance, which I always thought was ruined by the original adventure modules) and am a huge Greyhawk fan. That changed when I picked up the 3E FRCS -- as a result of playing the BG series games -- and subsequently got a copy of the original Grey Box. Ironically I'd played the original SSI Gold Box computer games, but I'd never made the connection between those games and a published campaign setting at the time.

I found that if I ignored the named characters (Mary Sues et al), the Realms-shattering events, and the novel-based evolution of canon, FR is a great place to run a wide variety of campaigns. There's such a huge depth of history and lore to draw from that it's easy to find a spot to fit campaign needs with a relative minimum of adaptation. I ran a multi-year successful campaign in my version of the Realms, which I'd effectively Greyhawk-ized by ignoring future canon, novels, RSEs, and big-name characters.

Greyhawk still is D&D's core in my heart, but as a result of my experience I'm a fan of FR as well. I think it will work great for 5E if WotC can avoid the historical bad tendencies (those three items I mention above). Ideally, I'd like to see them do a reset to the Grey Box era, then not mess with the timeline further. A campaign setting should expand outward, fleshing out other areas, but not forward -- gaming groups set the "future history" of a campaign setting.

I'll certainly echo a call for a return to Greyhawk in 5E -- but only if they put Erik Mona in charge, because I think of anyone I can name he gets it the best.

(On the FR novels ... I've read quite a few, and sadly most are crap, but unfortunately that also goes for the majority of D&D "gaming fiction". In reviewing that stuff you almost have to treat gaming fiction as a separate genre of F&SF in order to recalibrate your standards downward.)

 

[Rechan]

While I was introduced to fantasy novels via The Crystal Shard and read most of the FR novel lines, I never had much of an attachment to any setting. I enjoy Eberron a lot, but I'm far too in love with kitbashing elements from here and there, homebrewing things, etc.

Personally I think all the old settings are old-hat and played out.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

After thinking about my prior post, I'd add:

In my view the proper way ahead is not "Let's Forget the Forgotten Realms", but "Let's Reset the Forgotten Realms."

Much as there is interest in new ideas and setting, if you want to bring old players back, you're going to have to start with something they recognize, which means going back to AD&D era settings. Greyhawk and FR have the pull to do this; Dragonlance and Mystara might; Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Birthright, and Spelljammer are all to niche to pull it off; and Eberron and the Nentir Vale are too recent to rope in the grognards.

 

[JeffB]

Please no. I love GH but WOTC ( and Paizo running the magaziness) never had the plot to begin with. The GH products in the late 2e and 3e era did little morethan pay lip service to the setting and amounted to FR lite. The only GH I would like to see is possibly Mearls' pre wars setting. Otherwise let GH rest in peace.

 

[Pour]

Unification, in my opinion, requires something new and of excellent quality, something all of us can jump on board at the same time, be those neophytes experiencing the birth of a new, shared, experience, saying, "Yes! This is the kind of setting I could do something with..." and "Look what I did here." or "That's a great idea."

Utilizing any past setting simply sets us against each other, muddies golden memories, sparks lore and preference debates, and a dozen other unwanted symptoms. It's like the tradition and history of the game are at the same time D&D's most cherished asset and its terminal illness.

We need the 'New Classics', which can be like the old settings in some regards (mainly in the way they excite our imaginations), but rehashing, reinventing, and revisiting just leaves me cold and a lot of people in varying states of dissatisfaction.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Robin: "Golly, no proper 5e news, Bats!"

Batman: "What should we do, faithful sidekick?"

Robin: "I know! Setting elitism!"

Batman: "To the Batcave!"

Dadadadadadada Batman! Batman! Batman! Batman! *sound of keystrokes
*