Realmstalk (if you love it or hate it come on in)

[jester47]

OK, first off this is not a forum for argueing over the goods and bads of the Realms. Rather, it is a forum where we can get to the heart of the matter of why people like the realms. In this thread it became apparent to me that no one has the same image of the forgotten realms and most of us are judgeing the realms from prior experience, descriptions from friends, and also a bit of research, and assumed flavor.

First tell us your experience with the realms (have you only read the novels, have you just looked at the supplements but never played. Did a DM totally ruin it for you with Munchkin gaming? etc.) We are not looking for what you think we are loooking more for your experience with the realms.

Second, tell us what you look for in a campaign setting.

Then tell us about how FR does or does not fit the bill. Is it your style of play? Is it that you think there are too many people? What attracts or repels you from the realms.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Be civil, or the thread will go bye bye.

Aaron.

 

[Henry]

IMPORTANT NOTE: Be civil, or the thread will go bye bye.

I like this rule. I think I'll keep it.

For me, I have been reading of the realms and owning boxed sets since 1987. However, my REAL indoctrination into the realms (and what made me appreciate its robustness) was a DM who ran a campaign I played in two years ago. It was one of the best D&D games I ever played in, because the DM KNEW the world. He could protray the NPC's well, he knew what made this or that little roadside inn special, and he could whip out realms facts faster than a database search. I enjoyed it because we made a mark on the world around us, which is what any good D&D campaign should reflect having been played in.

I also read an occasional Realms novel (mostly the Salvatore stuff, but also Greenwwod - no one knows the realms like Grandpa Ed.)

 

[EricNoah]

I was intrigued by the Realms from day one when the first gray boxed set came out in the late 80s. It just seemed jam-packed with possibilities.

I also liked, at first, that there were novels to go with it. I did not like, however, that the novels would set the pace for furthering the history of the Realms beyond the timeline in the boxed set. I think TSR and later WotC learned from that mistake, or at least I hope they did.

I never saw the Realms as a place where low-level characters were useless because of all of these uber-NPCs. It just never occurred to me that those NPCs could stand in the way of fun. I always ran my games with the assumption that the uber NPCs were busy keeping the Realms out of other dangers that the PCs didn't know about.

I have run many campaigns in the Realms -- some "spanning the globe" ranging from Waterdeep to the Dalelands, others more centered on one location (my current campagin is set in the Dragon Coast, and I have run a FR Underdark campaign). I'm about to start as a player in a new Realms Underdark campaign and am looking forward to it.

There's a lot of territory I haven't explored -- The areas to the south and east have gone relatively untouched in my gaming, so there's lots of room to continue adventuring in fresh locales.

 

[Katerek]

I'll bite.

My first experience with the Realms was the City Sytem product when it was brand new all those years ago.

I was very impressed, and in fact I still use that product in my games to this day, although I am on my third copy.

I have read some fiction from the realms. Namely the Salvatore books when they were new and fresh, though I haven't touched one in 5 or 6 years. Frankly I have drifted away from fantasy literature altogether.

During second edition I bought every boxed set that the realms had. Strangely though I never really got to play there. I tried to run it once or twice but it felt overwhelming. As a DM I am never comfortable with the possibility that the players know more back ground than me.

When I game, either in playing or in running I look for a setting where I can actively effect change comfortably. I do not want to worry about some canonical text that will publish over what has come to pass in my games. I know that as a DM I have the right to ignore later publications and as a player I can do that to somewhat of a lesser degree. That being said, I do not always feel comfortable doing so.

What ultimately attracts me to the realms is the fine level of detail, but in the same breath I have to say that it is that very same detail that detracts me from it as well. On the surface it appears as if everything has been done and that no amount of great deeds will ever compare to anything that has already been accomplished by the bigwigs.

I would play, in fact I have contemplated building an entire setting around this, in a realms where everytyhing that is currently in print is ancient history. The annals of some long lost golden age.

The realms are nicely done, very nicely done. Like others on here I am often quick to use terms like Elmonster. I mean no insult, honest, it is just hard to stomach sometimes. I do have respect for the realms and all the work that has gone into it, deep down I just wish that work had been utilized and channeled elsewhere.

 

[jester47]

My experience with the realms has been pretty limited to the DMs side of the screen. I started running it back in the 1e days when I was in junior high. This should tell you somthing about our adventures. I ran another in highschool 2e before I quit playing for a while. Of those experiences I found the setting to be ok. But the reason I later discovered was that I did not really read thematerial. I would read bits and pieces and then try to make an adventure that used the stuff mentioned in the sources. However I would go overboard. A good example is hullack forest, I would try to have a ghost some orcs and some goblins, and I was a classic train conductor. Nothing ever seemed to get finished. I recently learned to wing it. And after doing that the realms made sense. In fact I became a convert. I have found that running the realms is knowing about them, and knowing about them takes some time. But once I knew, wow, I can do anything. There is not really a part of the realms that I do not get excited about.

I look for two things: In Depth history and little tidbits of information that I can use. I look for a few developed characters that I can make use of that have varying levels and places to put my own things. I look for interesting terrains and magic that reminds you of the end of time bandits and Dragonslair. However I want to be as gritty as warhammer FRP and have as much story and characterisation as the Moorcock, Beagle, Tolkein and have the wirdness of Lieber and Howard.

The realms has all this. It has the deserts and different kinds of forests. It has vile villans, kick ass heros that get thier asses handed to them, it has flying cities, strange towers no one ever comes back from, Mythals, it has dangerous artifacts and enough background to the point that I dont have to make lots of stuff up and can concentrate on the little bits of story that I do make up.

Aaron.

 

[Desdichado]

Things I like about the Realms:

• Details. You want to know something about someone or somewhere, it's in print somewhere.
• Optional/supplemental mechanics. New subraces, new spells, backgrounds for humans, lots of prestige classes, most of them pretty good -- the Realms has tons of new rules you can use that add flavor.
• Familiarity. Easy to find players who identify on some level at least with the Realms.
• Options. You can play just about any kind of D&D-ish character you can imagine.
• Books. Some of the novels are good, and help to really establish the flavor of the setting.

Things I don't like about the Realms:

• Details. Horror stories of players that know more about the Realms than the DM and throw a fit if anything changes. Few areas left to explore.
• Rules flavor. The Realms is unabashedly very high fantasy, with magic around every corner, and high level characters stopping at every other inn. Not only unrealistic, but very much counter to my personal style.
• Fluff flavor. Realms is a mish-mash of stuff thrown together without too much logic. It's got Egyptians, Mongols, Rennaissance Italy, Classic "Norse" barbarians, etc. -- the pallette is too big and too broad and the total is too busy and nonsensical.
• Unoriginal. I don't necessarily like really outlandish, unique fantasy settings, but I do like to at least have a twist of something with my traditional fantasy. Just familiar enough to make you feel at home, but something just different enough to make you feel like all these settings aren't just running together. I've never understood exactly what the "schtick" is of FR -- how is it different from Greyhawk except for the names and the map, for instance?

 

[EricNoah]

So, Josh, to keep it in line with the original question -- what experience with FR do you have? Have you run it as a DM, been in it as a player? Did the things you mention as "dislikes" actually happen to you (were you a victim of the nonsensical mish-mash of cultures, were you in a game where a player knew more than the DM, etc.)? I think jester is trying to separate pre-conceived notions from actual hands-on experience.

 

[Apok]

My experience with the Relams is that I've been playing in them or DMing them since I started playing 2e (which was around 89, I think). Since I have had very little exposure to Greyhawk, I immediately adopted them as my "standard" campaign setting of choice unless I felt like doing something a little different. Since that time, I have read most if not all of the FR paperback novels, acquire certain 'key' 2e suppliments (notably the FR Atlas) and as many 3e books as I can get my hands on. Today, I will use FR if I want to run a typical D&D campaign because I am very familiar with the setting and it's various elements.

It's hard to say what I look for in a campaign setting. I guess it all depends on what kind of atmosphere I am trying to run. For your basic High-Fantasy D&D classic style, FR works fine for me but I also enjoy Scarred Lands because of its more low-magic, grittier feel. Planescape and Dark Sun I both enjoy because they are both alien and familiar at the same time. Planescape gives you an excuse to do really out-there things and running or playing in Dark Sun is an experience unto itself. I guess you could say that the "tone" and "mood" of a campaign setting are very important to me, since they help dictate how I'm going to run the game or play the character. Iron Kingdoms caught my fancy because of it's widespread integration of firearms and steam-technology, which is something I've always wanted to do with FR but didn't because it would change the "classic D&D feel" too much. Now I can run a game using those elements without having to reverse engineer an existing campaign world or create my own (which requires alot of hard work).

Unlike some people, I have no problem with FR being so "well-developed" through novels and suppliments and such. If anything, it gives the setting a sense of life, of motion and activity. Things happen there. There is always something going on, plots being hatched, organizations bidding for power, threats of war, and so on. Yes, I know you could have these things with other settings, but it is just so prevalent in FR because of all the work that's been done on it.

Another thing which turns of alot of people is the Elminster Factor. Major NPC's are abound in FR, so how can the PC's possibly shine when there are so many big-shots running around? Why don't they just take care of everything? Well, because they can't. The NPC's of FR add another layer of depth to the setting, they have duty and responsibilities to uphold. Yes, it can be difficult to run in FR without hearing some mention of Alustriel or Elminster or Drizzt, but they are really just figureheads. Mysterious names of great power that the PC's may never interact with, doing incomprehensible things. In short, they are window dressing. They play no part in the Big Picture whatsoever unless the DM wants them to. It's easy to run an entire campaign, from 1st to Epic levels, without ever running into or dealing with these NPC's beyond the occasional mention.

The conept of "culture mish-mash" has never bothered me. It gives me and my players a frame of reference in which to work and detail certain cultural idosyncracies. It also helps to make the Reams more "familiar" to those who aren't as comfortable with fantasy cultures that have no basis in real history.

There really isn't anything I particularly dislike about FR, since anything can be worked around. I also understand that the setting was meant to be High Fantasy and powerful, so I wouldn't try and run a low-magic, gritty mercenaries campaign there. Campaign settings are just tools, and you should always use the Right Tool for the Right Job.

 

[Katerek]

Jester

I largely agree with you on all accounts it is a familiarity issue.

I have a friend that knows Tolkien like no ones business. In fact he can quote at length from the Silmarillion. He knows Aragorn's bloodline better than his own. That is cool. If we ever play Middle Earth there is no way that I would play with anyone running besides him.

I feel that Realms would require a similar knowledge base in order to properly pull off what the realms truly is. I have seen this in the past many times. I have been in a game where the DM got in a roadblock and uber-NPC had to save the day. It is also a matter of taste, deus-ex-machina is an exception rather than a rule in my mind.

I think that the reason the Realms receives so much flak is that it is the starting off point for so many new GM's and as a result so many inexperienced GMs. Whenever a GM is inexperienced, some chuckle head like me somewhere will have a negative experience.

So as a result I do not think that the Realms as a whole is to blame, Ed Greenwood can hardly be blamed for people who run bad games. As is most often the case, I suspect that when folks are complaining about the Realms, they most likely should be directing their displeasure elsewhere.

All of this has really gotten me to thinking about several different facets of the Realms. It has occurred to me that bitch as I might, I really would like to play in a realms game! It would have to be with a REALLY knowledgeable GM though.

If I had time I would become that person, but I am far to egocentrically attached to my homebrew setting.

Good Thread.

 

[Desdichado]

So, Josh, to keep it in line with the original question -- what experience with FR do you have? Have you run it as a DM, been in it as a player? Did the things you mention as "dislikes" actually happen to you (were you a victim of the nonsensical mish-mash of cultures, were you in a game where a player knew more than the DM, etc.)? I think jester is trying to separate pre-conceived notions from actual hands-on experience.

I've played the Realms, but never DMed them. As to being a victim of the mishmash of real-world cultures that shouldn't exist together without some form of explanation, yes, I certainly was bothered by that. As an amateur historian who fancies himself to have some level of expertise, it's easy for me to see through and destroy the image of a world that hangs together on it's own, because I recognize the real world analogs too easily. I also had some bad experiences in that campaign because of the rampant meta-game knowledge that some of the players (and the DM) had that I did not.

In other words, the things I don't like about the Realms are definately based on my personal experience with the Realms. Then again, so are the things I like about it, especially in it's 3e incarnation. I'm not a Realms hater, by any means. But I'm not much of a Realms lover either.