My DN Rant (cont'd)

[The Dungeon Nazi]

I just think it would be interesting to see how Glamdring can manage a novel-based FR setting. I like FR, but have never read any of its novels. Nor do I try to keep up with the setting by picking up every FR supplement. Personally, I think its a futile task to make *your* FR exactly like the *official* FR - novels and all.

In short, there's wayyy to much FR material out there. I just take what I want, and leave the rest, just like your salad bar...

That said, Glamdring's game/campaign might be extremely fun - who are we to judge?

I am, since I've played in it.

As a matter of fact, I'm heading out to Pittsburgh this weekend for his game, Codragon.

So for what it's worth, I can attempt to answer some of the questions in Glamdring's absence.

Unless something drastic and world-altering occurs in a new novel, there's no big deal as far as the game goes. Famous characters rarely make an appearance, so we don't have instances where, say, the party deals with a Jarlaxle who possesses the Crystal Shard, and then Servant of the Shard comes out, so he all of a sudden doesn't have it anymore since he loses it (and his mercenaries) in the book.

Having the books under your belt is just meant to really impress upon the DM and/or player the feel and flavor that really makes the Realms significantly different from Greyhawk or Dragonlance or Kalamar, things that you can't really pick up from the rulebooks. Neat little flavor things like the aforementioned novel uses of infravision. In addition to stuff like that, I think Greenwood's books are a great source of ideas for new and interesting spells, magic items and the like. For instance, a part of The Making of a Mage features Elmara raiding a lich's tower/tomb with an adventuring party, and one of her colleagues is a priest of Tyche. As the lich begins to claw its way out of its sarcophagas <sp?>, this priest of Tyche mutters an incantation and slashes his own throat. As the rest of the party attempts to flee, the Tychean falls to the ground, his blood pooling around his head. Elmara heads for the window and sees the priest's incoporeal form screaming at her to run as he holds the lid of the coffin in place.

Or the scene from Elminster in Hell that features The Simbul's Blood Ring, where she dumps all of her magical energy into a pair of bracers hidden under the skin of her forearms, activating them. It talks about how she'd spent decades building up this spell, secretly using subtle spells during battle to implant tiny amounts of her own blood into small cysts in the bodies of certain opponents. So with this magic item/spell, she calls into being a beholder, a red dragon, a red wizard and a Cult wizard, and none of them see her or each other -- just legions of devils who had surrounded The Simbul and were about to slaughter her like a pig. So they start going nuts, with the beholder firing off disintegrate - petrify - fear, the dragon scooping dozens of devils into its maw and chomping down, the wizards going bone-white with fear as they frantically try to loose spells and wands. This is definitely the intricate kind of stuff I'd want my PC mages to start researching once they're high level.

Anyway, another reason being familiar with the novels works for a game like Glamdring's is that the world's nuances, the politics, the motivations for a lot of villains, becomes familiar, so the DM can play off the intricate politics between the churches of Bane and Cyric, for example, or a player can make a reasonable assumption that if they slay a wizard and find a Ring of the Dragon on him, he's probably a Cultist and there just might be a dracolich in the vicinity. If you set foot in Cormyr, you're going to have to register as adventurers, and you're going to have your weapon tied with a sash to your scabbard, or you'll be a criminal. If you wander into Athkatla, you damn well better not start firing spells off within the city walls or you're going to be answering to their force of policing wizards. It goes a lot deeper than all this, but you get the idea.

Having all this material to draw from can really lend itself to bringing the whole place to life for the players. I've been in a lot of games that didn't rely so heavily on anything except the core rulebooks and the DM's imagination, and those games just couldn't measure up. Everything was all too simplistic.

This is not to say that it's wrong to do things another way or anything of the sort -- this is just my explanation for why running a game with all of the novels as reference material works to create a really enjoyable game (again, at least for me). It's not really about specific events or characters as it is about giving a solid impression about what it's like to live in and adventure in Faerun.

 

[Codragon]

I am, since I've played in it.

As a matter of fact, I'm heading out to Pittsburgh this weekend for his game, Codragon.

So for what it's worth, I can attempt to answer some of the questions in Glamdring's absence.

Unless something drastic and world-altering occurs in a new novel, there's no big deal as far as the game goes. Famous characters rarely make an appearance, so we don't have instances where, say, the party deals with a Jarlaxle who possesses the Crystal Shard, and then Servant of the Shard comes out, so he all of a sudden doesn't have it anymore since he loses it (and his mercenaries) in the book.

Having the books under your belt is just meant to really impress upon the DM and/or player the feel and flavor that really makes the Realms significantly different from Greyhawk or Dragonlance or Kalamar, things that you can't really pick up from the rulebooks. Neat little flavor things like the aforementioned novel uses of infravision. In addition to stuff like that, I think Greenwood's books are a great source of ideas for new and interesting spells, magic items and the like. For instance, a part of The Making of a Mage features Elmara raiding a lich's tower/tomb with an adventuring party, and one of her colleagues is a priest of Tyche. As the lich begins to claw its way out of its sarcophagas <sp?>, this priest of Tyche mutters an incantation and slashes his own throat. As the rest of the party attempts to flee, the Tychean falls to the ground, his blood pooling around his head. Elmara heads for the window and sees the priest's incoporeal form screaming at her to run as he holds the lid of the coffin in place.

Or the scene from Elminster in Hell that features The Simbul's Blood Ring, where she dumps all of her magical energy into a pair of bracers hidden under the skin of her forearms, activating them. It talks about how she'd spent decades building up this spell, secretly using subtle spells during battle to implant tiny amounts of her own blood into small cysts in the bodies of certain opponents. So with this magic item/spell, she calls into being a beholder, a red dragon, a red wizard and a Cult wizard, and none of them see her or each other -- just legions of devils who had surrounded The Simbul and were about to slaughter her like a pig. So they start going nuts, with the beholder firing off disintegrate - petrify - fear, the dragon scooping dozens of devils into its maw and chomping down, the wizards going bone-white with fear as they frantically try to loose spells and wands. This is definitely the intricate kind of stuff I'd want my PC mages to start researching once they're high level.

Anyway, another reason being familiar with the novels works for a game like Glamdring's is that the world's nuances, the politics, the motivations for a lot of villains, becomes familiar, so the DM can play off the intricate politics between the churches of Bane and Cyric, for example, or a player can make a reasonable assumption that if they slay a wizard and find a Ring of the Dragon on him, he's probably a Cultist and there just might be a dracolich in the vicinity. If you set foot in Cormyr, you're going to have to register as adventurers, and you're going to have your weapon tied with a sash to your scabbard, or you'll be a criminal. If you wander into Athkatla, you damn well better not start firing spells off within the city walls or you're going to be answering to their force of policing wizards. It goes a lot deeper than all this, but you get the idea.

Having all this material to draw from can really lend itself to bringing the whole place to life for the players. I've been in a lot of games that didn't rely so heavily on anything except the core rulebooks and the DM's imagination, and those games just couldn't measure up. Everything was all too simplistic.

This is not to say that it's wrong to do things another way or anything of the sort -- this is just my explanation for why running a game with all of the novels as reference material works to create a really enjoyable game (again, at least for me). It's not really about specific events or characters as it is about giving a solid impression about what it's like to live in and adventure in Faerun.

Cool. I'm just leaving work and don't have time to digest your whole post. Sounds like fun though...

 

[The Dungeon Nazi]

Out of curiosity, DN, would you be interested in reading a clipping regarding ia ciampiaiagn wiath PCs starting with major magical items (of sorts)? It's from one of the locial newspapers years ago (well, while we still had a monthly RPG column in the newspapers. Sigh.)

I'm surprised I didn't catch this earlier.

Sure, dude, hook me up.

 

[S'mon]

Hi DN, your description makes the game sound a lot of fun (description beats prescription in my book!). Personally I like to run my own game world where the PCs can potentially become major influences and literally change the course of history - destroying empires, creating new ones, even becoming gods. This would seem to be impossible in a purely 'canon' FR where only the book authors have such creative leeway, if them (I found the 'Horde' trilogy horribly dissapointing, incidentally).

 

[Dreaddisease]

Let him have it. Don't try to add any elements. But the first time he uses it he will be known for having that powerful powerful weapon and every 5-13th level character in the vicinity willb e after him for it. Of course that woud screw the party. But if you explain that to the character he should think twice, and if he doesn't then your other players will certainly boot him.

 

[WizarDru]

Quick point of law: 1e D&D DID have a default campaign setting, just like 3E does: Greyhawk. Granted, it was barely represented with any sort of necessity or depth, but there it was. I would put forth that after the arrival of the Realms, there was no longer a single setting that was considered the 'default' any longer, only more popular versus less popular settings. And let us not forget that too many settings (and the act of using the profits from successful ones to prop up unsuccessful ones) was one of the significant factors that doomed TSR.


That said, Colonel Hardisson put for the idea that seems the most logical to me...after all, I've used the same technique in my own game.

 

[The Dungeon Nazi]

Quick point of law: 1e D&D DID have a default campaign setting, just like 3E does: Greyhawk. Granted, it was barely represented with any sort of necessity or depth, but there it was. I would put forth that after the arrival of the Realms, there was no longer a single setting that was considered the 'default' any longer, only more popular versus less popular settings. And let us not forget that too many settings (and the act of using the profits from successful ones to prop up unsuccessful ones) was one of the significant factors that doomed TSR.

Well, I can add this, quoted out of page 4 of 'Running the Realms,' which was included in the gray FR boxed set:

"It was on the merit of these articles [that Ed Greenwood wrote for Dragon magazine] that the Realms were suggested as a basis for an AD&D campaign, and eventually as the home for the AD&D 2nd Edition game."