Points of Light and the Forgotten Realms

[Uzzy]

In my buddy's ongoing FR campaign, everybody has their own Realms, that has been going for about 18 years, Elminster was slain by Asmodeus around the timeline just after the Yamun Kahan/Azoun/Horde fiasco.

And that's great! Make the Realms your own, I say. If you want to remove Elminster, go for it. If you want to start a civil war in Cormyr, then do it. I can't stop what you do in your homegame. Heck, my own Realms is a variant.

One of my reasons to be upset about this possible 100 year advance is that it makes most of the 4th Edition Realms sourcebooks useless to me. Many people make the Realms their own, tweaking parts to suit themselves and their players better. But still, they can find use from the Sourcebooks, no? You might not have Elminster, but you can still find use from Code of the Harpers. You might not have Undermountain, but that doesn't mean that City of Splendours: Waterdeep is useless to you. If, however, I'm still playing around 1375 DR, an Empire of Netheril sourcebook set a hundred years later is useless.

The 100 year advance, if it follows most of what Drizzt said, will remove much of the flavour of the Realms, which is what I enjoy the most. They seem to be doing this to attract new fans, which is always good, but not when it's at the expense of many of the current fans of the setting.

 

[Mortellan]

The Concerns of the Mighty angle is quite convincing. I might put a new spin on the hate of FR's NPCs however. Take it with a grain of salt, I'm probably off by a mile. Anyhow, it is not that NPCs are stealing the spotlight directly from PCs, it's that these NPCs which have been meticulously detailed and glamorized in novels, sourcebooks and video games to the point where they have set the bar rather high for players. It's the envy factor. Mind you, Greyhawk has its share of unattainables too in the Circle of Eight and the dozens of quasi/hero deities. This is what I've seen in my campaigns. I do not even have to use Mordenkainen directly, but to name drop him results in sneers and jeers. Why? He never swooped in and 'stole their kill', he never hired them for a quest nor so muh as personally met their characters. It's because they know the unwritten, unspoken rule of campaigns say DMs should not let their characters advance ahead of these iconic figures. The reason? I believe one reason is the game breaks down fast once PCs are the same plateau as Mordenkainen or Elminster. This is why many high level PCs are forced into retirement and why Epic level play in most editions never really worked good. I've read on the forums many times that alot of people's campaigns never get over 15th level for example. I don't think thats a coincidence and its probably why they are tweaking the levels in 4e.
To reiterate, players are shown in the uber-NPCs what they can aspire to be, but the goal is often too lofty and unrealistic for the game system employed. It's like young adults aspiring to be supermodels or professional athletes while at the same time resenting these figures and looking for ways to tear them down if they can't achieve their goal.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

As for the Greyhawk NPCs, I think that since the Flanaess is a busy place with a lot of people, they would still be busy with a bunch of things even if they were all of good alignment. Remember, not all problems can be solved by blasting it. In some cases, tackling a problem head on can be counterproductive.

The problem is, you can make up a lot of reasons why they might be elsewhere, but there is a certain list of problems that you just wouldn't be able explain away.

For instance, your plot requires that one of the enemies is planning something that will destroy the weave on the whole planet rendering magic unusable. Only, you can't use this plot because there's almost NOTHING you could explain as being more important to Elminster than this.

Plus, when you start having wizards of Elminster's power level, you can't really use "he's far away right now" or "he doesn't know about it" as excuses as he has a network of friends, spies, magical protections, and any number of other things in nearly every city in the Realms that informs him. And he has teleportation and planeshifting magic to get wherever he wants in an instant. He's THAT cool. That's why he's Elminster.

The same thing would happen if you suddenly made any of the major NPCs in Greyhawk good. There is basically no reason you could come up with why Mord himself wouldn't show up to almost anything 15+ level in scale as these sort of things start threatening countries or entire sections of the Flanaess. If he's a good guy, he'll want to stop them.

You can use the whole "there are 100 threats for the 100 powerful adventures out there" argument as well. However, it makes the PCs not feel special. Instead of the heroes of the planet who are the ONLY hope should something go wrong, they are instead one of a "police force" of adventurers out there continually saving the world. If they fail, and the situation becomes REALLY dire then Elminster or Blackstaff or Simbul or....insert any number of other people will likely come to fix it. At least ONE of them's bound to have the day off, right?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Because the sidebar 'Concerns of the Mighty' explains quite clearly WHY Elminster and the other Chosen don't go out to destroy each and every evil being in Faerún. It's right there in the FRCS, in black and white. I even linked to a great explanation over at the WoTC boards. Yet people continue to complain about Elminster and the other Chosen. It's either stubbornness or a misunderstanding. If you'd like, I'd be happy to go through Concerns of the Mighty with you.

I understand it fine. I just don't AGREE with it. There's a difference. To me it reads "We couldn't think of a better excuse, so this is the only one we've got". I mean, it works as an excuse, but not ALL the time and not for everything.

If a DM in Greyhawk used Mordenkainen wrongly, and had him interfering with PC's plans in the name of neutrality, we would rightly call that bad DMing. If a DM in Dragonlance had Raistlin pop up and consistently save the day, making the PC's obsolete, we would rightly call that bad DMing. Yet misusing the big NPC's in the Realms is not referred to as such, it's referred to as problems in the setting, despite the quite clear explanations given in the FRCS itself.

Mord and The Circle HAVE been known to show up and meddle with things in the name of Neutrality. They don't do it often and when they meddle it rarely makes sense to the people around them WHY they meddled, but they DO meddle. It's just that their concerns are only for their own schemes and their own power. That's because they are Neutral though, they stay out of things. Raistlin was evil for a large amount of time and was obsessed with gaining power over anything else. He's not the type who would do the hero thing and butt in on the PCs business.

Elminster's different in that every book he's in has him teleporting all over the world saving people, stopping evil plots. In the Time of Troubles novel he even had time to show up, stop a spell from going haywire then teleport out again to fix more things.

What it comes down to is most of the time it's the PCs job to stop the Evil guys from doing Evil. That's also Elminster's job and he's better at it than the PCs are. A LOT better at it. It's also Drizzt's job, and a lot of other heroes. All of whom are better than the PCs. If an evil wizard is threatening to destroy Ten-Towns and Drizzt isn't around to stop him within a couple of weeks, it doesn't make much sense.

 

[hopeless]

Hmm...

I like Elminster as a recluse too, makes him even more like Gandalf though. A benevolent divine agent who shows up to push heroes in the right direction and to throw down when there is need. Most times he's off researching the origins of orc haiku for glimpses of prophecy and hitting the astral club scene, romancing anything with legs. <shudder>

it might work better for him to adopt disguises so the party especially don't realise who he is and to make his enemies keep wondering where he is.

Sort of becoming that bedraggled old man who provides some advice that the pc's don't understand until they find themselves in an adventure and suddenly realise what that crazy old fool was talking about... I guess alot less of a lothario and much more of a ... dungeonmaster!

 

[PaulKemp]

I understand it fine. I just don't AGREE with it. There's a difference. To me it reads "We couldn't think of a better excuse, so this is the only one we've got". I mean, it works as an excuse, but not ALL the time and not for everything.

See, I find it persuasive and here's the reason. In any given day, Elminster (or any high powered individual we'd care to name) sleeps, eats, hits the loo, smokes his pipe, prepares his spells, tends his garden, discusses the weather with friends, plays a game of chess, reads a book, and generally lives his life. The notion that he dots around the Realms resetting hundreds of contingency spells, spends hours cutting through the defensive wards of hundreds of high level "evil" powerful beings so that he can scry them, learn of their plots, then generally foul and foil such plots is silly. He's a man. A powerful man, but a man nevertheless, with all that that implies. I think we tend to regard NPCs like Elminster the way we might regard the POV character in a video game -- he never tires, he never eats/sleeps/relaxes, he never simply takes a moment to live, and his mind has limitless capacity for containing, keeping straight, and accurately evaluating information. All of that is wrong. He's just a powerful wizard with a big reputation. The idea that he would constantly overshadow PCs is baffling to me. Given his limits as a man and the enormous amount of activity going on in the world at any time, I find it highly implausible in most cases that he would have any idea what was transpiring with the PCs, even if their quest were a high-level one. I take your point about an attack on the Weave. Were that to occur, given the assumptions of the setting, I think Elminister might get involved at some point. But barring that or an attack on Shadowdale, I just don't see him as much of a factor.

What it comes down to is most of the time it's the PCs job to stop the Evil guys from doing Evil. That's also Elminster's job and he's better at it than the PCs are. A LOT better at it. It's also Drizzt's job, and a lot of other heroes. All of whom are better than the PCs. If an evil wizard is threatening to destroy Ten-Towns and Drizzt isn't around to stop him within a couple of weeks, it doesn't make much sense.

But I see the logic of this position applying to the PCs at any level in any setting. Shouldn't the first level PCs feel helpless and stupid in stopping the rampaging troll in the city streets? After all, the town guard with its fourth level sergeant, a man vastly more powerful than the PCs, soon will arrive to set matters aright. If not him, then surely the senior priest in the local temple will manage affairs. Perhaps the PCs should simply accept the fact that they are merely little fish in the big pond of the world and head back to their farms to till the fields.

All of this strikes me not unlike saying, "I don't want to adventure in the Young Kingdoms because Elric can kick my ass," same goes for Conan and his world, for Nehwon and Fafhrd and the Mouser, etc.

 

[Athenon]

Thank you Paul for a GREAT post!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's either stubbornness or a misunderstanding.

Or a difference of opinion. Instead of reposting the same thing over and over again, actually read what folks' complaints are. The sidebar does not work in many groups after the first two or three times.

Either re-read what people's actual complaints are, instead of assuming they're just ignorant of the Divine Truth of the Sidebar, or drop it.

 

[Davelozzi]

Shouldn't the first level PCs feel helpless and stupid in stopping the rampaging troll in the city streets?

I don't know about stupid, but they should feel pretty helpless, the troll is CR 5.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I don't know about stupid, but they should feel pretty helpless, the troll is CR 5.

That's funny. I was thinking the same thing.