Question for the Old Schoolers

[Ulrick]

I'm so old school, I hate FR for ruining Greyhawk.

But 3e FR was a nice book, visually, organizationally, and in tone. It was also a major breakthrough in terms of class and feat design for 3e; although a few options turned out to be overpowered, in general, it was a step upward toward "play what you want" and giving arcane casters and fighters as many options as clerics got.

An article by Roger E. Moore in Dragon #228 contains a passage that pretty much sums up my encounters with FR in the 1990s. At the time I was running a Greyhawk Campaign:

"Man, this City of Greyhawk campaign bites. You people should dump this stupid world. It's dead anyway. Let's a get a Realms campaign going. I had a character once who was Elminster's nephew, and he--"

Salvatore's FR novels were fairly good. But I got sick of all these players running around who read nearly all of the novels then complaining when DMs didn't want to run a Realms campaign.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Would you say something was lost in transition for Forgotten Realms from D&D 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition?

I have no idea. I thought the 1e grey box of the Forgotten Realms was decent, but I never ran it and ended up trading it to a friend (for a copy of Victory Games James Bond 007 -- I think I came out ahead on that). That was pretty much the extent of my interest and involvement with the Forgotten Realms.

 

[rogueattorney]

I would qualify the 1e Grey Box as "not horrible, with some really excellent parts," which was somewhat remarkable considering some of the absolute carp TSR was spewing out at the tail end of the '80s. The 1e era FR supplements also tended to be pretty good.

The whole thing got pretty messed up quickly, with the nearly immediate release of 2e and the Avatar Trilogy of books/modules, which was then immediately followed with the Horde group of books/modules, permanently cementing the Forgotten Realms as a setting driven by novels and constant meta-plot.

 

[howandwhy99]

I like Forgotten Realms and even most changes from most re-publishings. As a campaign setting I believe it is far more suitable to a shared world for novelists than for an RPG. There is simply too much canon, all of which the players may read prior to play. It is not suited to a world exploration puzzle game. It was the setting for which the phrase "cannon lawyer" was originally coined.

Yes, 3E's book was a great book. So was the LGG and the original grey box. But I would not run it as printed, if only for the same reason I would not run any module as printed. If the player's have read the books beforehand, then there is no awe of learning the material through play.

Was something lost coming to 3E? Well, yes. Something is lost from each re-imagining. But new ideas are added as well. It isn't as split in coherency as Greyhawk, but there are certainly some big changes between iterations.

As to "old school" I don't really equate it as an old school setting because it is so detailed and openly read. Old school is more a manner of play than any adventure or setting. Yeah, both of those can be more ably designed for old school play, but FR was never written as such IMO.

=====

I think FR can be fresh again, if it wasn't presented as a single perspective whole. Instead, each DM could recreate new names, places, and faces from individual cultural perspectives. 6-7 years ago, I did this with for a campaign prep eventually voted down by the group in favor of a couple other choices. However, the flavor still sticks with me. Try this:

"The lost dwarven clan of Mordinglor is secreted in a ancient hold their ancestors found on the eastern side of the Dragons's Spine Peaks. Beset by giants and preternatural beasts of the isolated mountain passes above and the terrors of eternal night below, the families of the clan are pressed into an uneasy alliance. Stretching to the rising sun is an endless waste of broken rock and scorched desert. Only the horse lords dare live within claiming rule over whatever ground they trod upon, pillaging from all they encounter. Leaving the hidden confines of the hold for trademeets with the lying, masked witch-folk of the northern pass are perilous endeavors at best. Rumors of copper dwarves to the south are scoffed at as best legends, no caravan having ever returned from a southward journey. Above all and in the back of every mind is the threat of the ever-spinning magics mastered by the Wizard-Kings from across the mountains, their evil empire sprawling in all directions west, a populace numbering in the millions all enslaved."

[sblock]I thought the above was better than the horde boxed set. A little swords & sorcery re-imagining for the setting, a few re-namings, and a little perspective shift can go a long way.[/sblock]

 

[pawsplay]

As to "old school" I don't really equate it as an old school setting because it is so detailed and openly read. Old school is more a manner of play than any adventure or setting. Yeah, both of those can be more ably designed for old school play, but FR was never written as such IMO.

Not only that, but the timing was wrong. I was all like Known World, Known World, Greyhawk Boxed Set, blah blah blah, and then.... ZAM! There's these crazy FR novels, and a campaign setting, and I'm trying to figure out what a "firbolg" is and when D&D became about magical pools that hold the fate of the world. Dragonlance was epic+++ but at least it was tidy; from the beginning, FR was like the firehose of campaign settings.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Dragonlance was epic+++ but at least it was tidy; from the beginning, FR was like the firehose of campaign settings.

That was a design choice--Dragonlance was always focused around the One Story (and has struggled to escape that problem, with varying results, for over a quarter-century); the Realms were intended as a broad-spectrum setting where you could have a whole bunch of different things going on at once. (I also get the sense that the Realms were proto-Eberronian in the sense that they were meant to have a home for just about everything in AD&D. I can't find documentation for that, although there was a period when the Realms were looked on as the 'official home' for AD&D 2nd Edition.)

 

[TarionzCousin]

I've never been a settings fan, and have never used a published setting. But I did think the 3E FR book was an excellent book, and one of the best examples of a setting book I've seen. They got it right with that one.

When did Ed Greenwood start being grumpy toward Sean K. Reynolds? Wasn't it shortly after the 3E FRCS was published?

My first real campaign began when I purchased the Grey Boxed Set. I used everything I could get my hands on. The level of detail was so much more what I needed than what else was available. The first Waterdeep accessory actually had a map of the city, a map of the sewers, facts about noble families, how the watch and the guard worked, etc. It was all designed to be used in play.

 

[Treebore]

Hey, I only used the term "Old School" because it is more polite than callin' y'all a bunch a Grognards . And this isn't about 3e to 4e - I know all the issues there. Dragonlancing the Forgotten Realms was a little extreme.

See, I've been trying to track down just what it is that bugs me about the Forgotten Realms setting. Many of the reasons that I thought I had were actually inaccurate, since there are other settings with the same traits that I liked. I finally figured out what it was (well, other than some of the overly entheusiasic fans): Forgotten Realms is a setting that makes me feel like I need to go read the books in order to really figure out what it is about. I got the same feelings towards d20 Wheel of Time, and actually read the books several years after looking through the d20 book. Without reading the actual series, I didn't really know what the setting was about just from the d20 book (which many people see as a really good setting book).

It isn't necessarally a bad thing, as it plays up to the fanbase and increases initial sales, but it does make it tricky when growing the brand to folk who haven't read the books and feel a little intimidated by the massive Wall of Forgotten Realms at the used book store.

Granted, it doesn't help that it is a High Magic campaign that thinks it's High Fantasy.

Ah, the age old problem. The answer to that is in my previous post. There is no Canon, except yours. No novels, no modules, etc... at best those things are just Bards Tales told to make some coin. Until the GM decides what is accurate, and what is not.


Got a player who tells you that you have "it" wrong? Tell him that is what they get for listening to Bards Tales, everyone knows how unreliable those are.

The great thing is, you already have these great "rumors" already written up for you. Now your players need to find out which are true, and which are false. Which only the GM knows with any certainty.

 

[Morrus]

When did Ed Greenwood start being grumpy toward Sean K. Reynolds? Wasn't it shortly after the 3E FRCS was published?

No idea. Is that relevant to my opinion of the 3E FR book?

 

[TarionzCousin]

No idea. Is that relevant to my opinion of the 3E FR book?

No, but I thought you might know.