Netheril's Fall - First Impressions

If Astarion's Book of Hungers is the player-facing add-on for Heroes of Faerun, than Netheril's Fall is the slightly more beefy add-on for Adventures in Faerun. The new digital "DLC" for the Forgotten Realms book is a gazetteer for the lost kingdom of Netheril, with an overview of the fallen kingdom, a look at two of its cities (one flying city, Eileanar, and the landbound city Conch), some magically-themed environmental hazards, and a short collection of mini-adventures in the style of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Netheril's Fall is functionally a mini-gazetteer, albeit not quite as beefy as the five gazetteers found in Adventures in Faerun that detail various regions.

At first glance, it's easy to see why Netheril's Fall wasn't included in Adventures in Faerun. Netheril is a fallen empire and having an adventure in Netheril will likely require the use of time gates (which are conveniently explained in the supplement, with two adventures dedicated to traveling and crossing through a Time Gate. I'll note that the adventures in this book feel much more specific than what we saw in Adventures in Faerun or the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. While the adventures in other books could be "plugged" into any level-appropriate campaign, these adventures feel much more narrow in scope and cover specific locations or events found in the DLC. There's a few adventures in Adventures in Faerun that cover locales seen in the gazetteer, but there aren't very many that cover a specific event. I don't mind the "one page adventure" format, but I'm not sure it works with every adventure type. If an adventure sends players into a mad wizard's attempted ascent into godhood, I want a little more meat than a few encounters and a resolution of "well, the players will have time to explore the city before the ritual fails."

Another criticism I have of Netheril's Fall is that Netheril doesn't feel nearly as fantastical as an ancient high-magic society should. Given that Adventures in Faerun did a very find job of elevating the Forgotten Realms beyond its generic high fantasy trappings, I feel like a bit more care could have really sold Netheril as more fantastical in nature than what we got. If we could have gotten a few more pages about Netheril's culture, I feel like Netheril would have been more appealing as a place that DMs would want to incorporate into their campaigns. As presented, there are a few cool ideas, but even the phaerimm (one of my favorite D&D monsters) feel a bit flat compared to what we would have gotten.

I was critical of Astarion's Book of Hunger's price point, and while I feel that $15 is still too high for Netheril's Fall, there's a lot more "content" compared to that book. Generally speaking, some adventure content, a gazetteer, and some monster statblocks is probably a bit more valuable than one new species and a collection of feats, although I'm probably a bit biased towards DM content since I'm usually the one behind the DM screen. I personally would had preferred a $10 price point for this DLC, but others may feel that the price point of these are more fair.

All in all, I feel a bit underwhelmed by Netheril's Fall. Netheril seems like a very cool part of Forgotten Realms lore, but it's not given full justice here. I know there's some other Netheril content out there from past editions, and I encourage people to check those out on DMs Guild if they want a real deep dive into this lost empire.

 

[Parmandur]

Who is Sliminster?

Eliminster's evil clone, probably with a goatee over his beard.

 

[pukunui]

100%. You need to hit the time-traveling players with something really foreign and antiquated and exotic, and it is hard to do when they are pretty much walking from one epic fantasy Renaissance faire into . . . a somewhat epicer fantasy Renaissance faire.

The writers made a bit of an effort by stating that the Netherese wore togas and other Roman-style accoutrements. So you could argue that the time travel would be taking your Ren Faire PCs to an Ancient Rome pageant or something.

It’s interesting how many fantasy settings have an “Ancient Rome but with magic” society built into their fictional histories. FR has Netheril, Dragonlance has Istar, Dragon Age has Tevinter, and so on.

 

[Maxperson]

So very few elves that could potentially remember Netheril. And they would probably have to live in the vicinity as well.

If the average lifespan is 2000+ years and many live up to 2500 years, a whole lot of elves would remember 1800 years ago. And elves are a very learned race, and THEY are the ones that taught Netheril magic.

 

[Maxperson]

That's why I see the "change" to 750 years as simply a change to what we're seeing represented. It's the more likely lifespan of an elf, rather than the higher end. Sure, there's some really old elves that may have been children when Netheril fell, but for most, it's the equivalent of the 1770's to us real-world modern humans. It might be known history, but it's still "a long time ago".

To everyone who isn't an elf, it's the Roman Empire. Still something that you've certainly heard of, but c'mon, outside those of us with an interest, your average person doesn't really know much about the place, other than stories that aren't actually very accurate. They're more equivalent to "Legends".

And yet we still live in its shadow.

That's a reasonable stance to take. For myself, I am really fond of Tolkien's elves, so my elves are immortal, but after about 2000 years they get restless and go to Arvandor "Aman" to live with the elven gods. My elves are also very tall, averaging 6 feet tall.

 

[Maxperson]

Elminster. Parmandur is all thumbs.

Eliminster on a diet?

 

[Maxperson]

And others with similar comments of course

We have people in a real world with a highly available internet who have already forgotten about major events and nations within their own lifetimes.
Knowledge and civilizations fade really fast.

Or else received very unreliable information on that highly available internet.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, Halastar was actually like 5,000 years old when he died, and came from a pre-Netherese civilization l, but thst involves timefreezing. But he was active again im the 2nd ce fury DR. Sliminster was born on the 3rd century DR. So with powerful magics users, knowledge of the ancient world is alive even with Humans.

Yeah. Halaster was(Is in my game, because I like him too much) Imaskari.

 

[Distracted DM]

I mean, the Species, Backgrounds and Feats can be years of gameplay for someone, Monsters and Adventures are a but more one-off.

This just sounds like you value player content over GM content. They can both be viewed as having years of gameplay value, and they're both integral to the game.

 

[Maxperson]

Trying to find a non-political event to disprove the one-word rebuttal is hard.

There are large swaths of Americans who didn't know which side of World War II the Soviets were on.
About 20% of Americans didn't know the Berlin Wall was taken down 12 months after it was.

Hell, if a study came out showing that 20% of Americans STILL don't know that the Berlin Wall was taken down, I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Maxperson]

100%. You need to hit the time-traveling players with something really foreign and antiquated and exotic, and it is hard to do when they are pretty much walking from one epic fantasy Renaissance faire into . . . a somewhat epicer fantasy Renaissance faire.

About the only way I could think to do it would be to show 9th, 10th, and 11th level spells being casually thrown about by powerful Arcanists.