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.

 

[Maxperson]

I was 8 in 1989. I vaguely remember seeing news on the TV about the Berlin Wall coming down. I have an even vaguer memory of watching the Challenger explode on the TV news. (I would have been 5 then.)

I was in high school for the Challenger and in science class. The teacher wheeled in a TV so the class could watch the launch live. As you would expect from a high school class, there was lots of talking and laughing. When the Challenger exploded, you could have heard a pin drop for about 30 seconds.

Contrast that with my memories of 9/11. Those felt seared in my memory as if they had happened only yesterday for many years.

Both the Challenger and 9/11 are seared in my memory and remain so. I worked retail in 2001 and went to work on 9/11. A woman walked in at some point and said, "Don't you just love when disasters like this happen? The stores are always so empty when I shop." It was all I could do not to tell her off.

 

[pukunui]

I was in high school for the Challenger and in science class. The teacher wheeled in a TV so the class could watch the launch live. As you would expect from a high school class, there was lots of talking and laughing. When the Challenger exploded, you could have heard a pin drop for about 30 seconds.

I can imagine!

Both the Challenger and 9/11 are seared in my memory and remain so. I worked retail in 2001 and went to work on 9/11. A woman walked in at some point and said, "Don't you just love when disasters like this happen? The stores are always so empty when I shop." It was all I could do not to tell her off.

Wow. That's callous. I can still remember much of 9/11 in great detail. It just no longer feels like it happened yesterday.

 

[JPL]

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.

What it probably requires is some deep thought about how it affects the world that there are guys who can throw around ninth 10th and 11th level spells, even when those guys aren’t around. Maybe make it a metaphor for multi billionaires?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sorry, what was this Berlin Wall you keep talking about? Never heard of it.

This really, is the important question. To understand the significance, you need to know what the Berlin Wall was, and why it was there.

But that's not "lost" information. Even if you can't read, you can still find a village elder who can explain it to you.

 

[SkidAce]

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.

I've flipped the idea a bit.

My homebrew campaign has a Turkish/India flavored fallen empire, and the current main kingdom that has risen from the ashes is a Romanesque style culture.

 

[evildmguy]

I like AI. I do pay for it and asked it to do a deep dive. It thought for nearly four minutes. Its conclusion?

Common folk only know local history. (FR Grey box, 3E FRCS)
Literacy in FR is lower than real world. (especially as we learn literacy wasn't as low as we think every year in our world)
History is fragmented due to wars or direct purging of archives.
A few historical orders exist, Candlekeep, and the like might know more.
The average person thinks of it as a legendary and mythic realm of flying cities with arrogant mages. Nobles might add "that fell."

More than willing to share its results if anyone is interested.
As another fun side note, 1E DND allowed for elves to live 2000 years but this search put the FR elf max age as 1000 with a few 1200 exceptions for natural age.

All of that to say that Netheril, having fallen in -339 DR, is myth and legend to most commoners, whether you use the year in the grey boxed set or current year.

Now I'm off to ask how to make Netheril different from current times in case I do have time travel.

Thanks for the discussion!

 

[Not a Decepticon]

One of the things that irritates me about Netheril, is it's sort of presented like this big legendary culture of the distant past...but it only ended and had those floating cities come down about a thousand years before the current couple of centuries (depending on edition).

Thousand years ago from today Poland only had its first official king, it will be still 200 years before fall of Bizantine Empire and it will still be six centuries before discovery of Americas.

Back on topic - any player material in this book? Species, Feats, subclasses?

 

[Maxperson]

Thousand years ago from today Poland only had its first official king, it will be still 200 years before fall of Bizantine Empire and it will still be six centuries before discovery of Americas.

Back on topic - any player material in this book? Species, Feats, subclasses?

1000 years ago would be 1025. Columbus "discovered" America in 1492, well short of 6 centuries. Vikings, however, discovered the Americas in 1021, 4 years before your king there.

 

[evildmguy]

1000 years ago would be 1025. Columbus "discovered" America in 1492, well short of 6 centuries. Vikings, however, discovered the Americas in 1021, 4 years before your king there.

ETA: I still don't see the person you are quoting on this but did get the notification on it.

I think what I would rather do is discuss what we think Netheril should have looked like. I agree it shouldn't be "more renaissance-y" but advanced magitech. Given what the cities had, something like "wifi" magic. Powering a lot of personal magic. Flying vehicles of some kind while in the town. Only arch-mages have flying trains that can go to other cities. Some sort of magical smart phone type thing. It's been a while since I read what High Netheril did daily and need to reread that.

I do wonder if Low Netheril was losing people who fled? Why stay there compared to anyplace else? I think of them as serfs so maybe they have overseers responsible for keeping them working. Not sure if they had magitech to grow more food or more efficiently? That could be interesting. It also creates a lot of ideas for relics to be found and their function.

Thanks for the discussion!

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, as a person who likes history, I know when the vikings made it to America. I'm not sure what king I referenced? If not me, what did this reference?

Thanks for the discussion!

Looks like someone may have you blocked. I was responding to a post that said that Poland's first official king was 1000 years ago, six centuries before the Americas were discovered.