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Realmstalk (if you love it or hate it come on in)
- Thread starter jester47
- Start date
Psion
Adventurer
My experience with the Realms: Played under it under a Realms-fiend DM (who has since moved on to Scarred Lands and Kalamar.) Bought and used many realms products while DMing. I am a big fan of the Undermountain and a modest fan of Kara-Tur and the Cult of the Dragon, and steal bits for my own campaign.
As for what my perception of the realms is, Joshua is pretty close, but to put it in my own terms.
On the plus side, it has a lot of nice high fantasy ideas embedded in it. I love the undermountain, the cult of the dragon, dracoliches, some of their innovations to the drow, and many minor elements.
What I don't like:
As for what my perception of the realms is, Joshua is pretty close, but to put it in my own terms.
On the plus side, it has a lot of nice high fantasy ideas embedded in it. I love the undermountain, the cult of the dragon, dracoliches, some of their innovations to the drow, and many minor elements.
What I don't like:
- The mish-mash: There are a lot of nice source ideas in the realm. Perhaps too many though. It all seems like a collossal mish-mash of ideas to me.
- Novel characters and effects: I have only read a few of the novels. I did find the Drizzt books to be a good read, found the Avatar books horrible. Whatever the case, I am more a gamer than a reader. The novel characters and events brought about by the novels make the characters seem entirely too secondary. Elminster is a particularly grevious example, and is a blatantly "Mary Sue" character.
- Too blase about magic: The realm will do anything with magic. It invokes it at a whim. Magic to drain sewers? Not a problem. I think it cheapens the concept of magic invoking it so carelessly.
- Co-opting: This is more a comment on the effect the Realms has had on D&D publishing rather than D&D itself, but I really despise how anything that gets used in the realms becomes part of it, and sooner or later get adopted from it until Realms canon takes over. Kara Tur. Drow. Demihuman deities. Avariel. Portals. Genasi. All in other settings or the core first, all now can only be had through Realms canon.
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It isn't the Realms that I have a problem with. It is those who think it is the beginning and the end of D&D.
Personal experience:
I got into many arguments at a game store in my area that is no longer around about where things started. Many believe that the Realms was the beginning of things like drow, dual weapon wielding rangers, old, long bearded, pointy-wide brimmed hat wearing mages and so on...
It isn't a problem with the realms, it is with the dm's that I have had that use the NPC's of the realms in his games more than the player characters. It is the dm's that I have had that tout the magic strength of the world and then not allow a 17th level character to have a weapon over +3.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift.
I am not a realms basher, just one who complains about the misinformed and inexperienced.
wally
Personal experience:
I got into many arguments at a game store in my area that is no longer around about where things started. Many believe that the Realms was the beginning of things like drow, dual weapon wielding rangers, old, long bearded, pointy-wide brimmed hat wearing mages and so on...
It isn't a problem with the realms, it is with the dm's that I have had that use the NPC's of the realms in his games more than the player characters. It is the dm's that I have had that tout the magic strength of the world and then not allow a 17th level character to have a weapon over +3.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift.
I am not a realms basher, just one who complains about the misinformed and inexperienced.wally
jester47
First Post
Psion said:
who uses magic to drain sewers? Seems to me that people in the realms would create sewers that worked so they could use the magic elsewhere. I never saw magic in FR as THAT common. But even then I could see a really coll fight happening in such a sewer where the water was doing some kind of M.C. Escher stuff. That would ROCK!
Aaron.
jgbrowning
Hero
Psion said:
I have to disagree. Any society that developes with magic would find practical (and money-making, i must add) methods of using it.
This too, drives me batty.
---------------------------------------------
My realms experience. None.
read the game books, staring with the first one way back and have the 3rd edition as well.
I don't like the realms because the good powerful characters would attack the evil powerful characters. They're hero's just like the PCs and they would behave in the same way. My opinion, of course.
joe b.
Prince Atom
Explorer
My experience has been limited. Someone in high school who wasn't exactly a friend turned me onto The Crystal Shard about ten years ago. I devoured those books; my family wasn't too happy, but I didn't care.
Eventually I discovered that RA Salvatore was not really the shiznat I thought he was, and I moved on to authors of quality (I recently rented Servant of the Shard but I couldn't get into it).
My latest novel experience was the trilogy beginning with Azure Bonds, which I got second hand, because of the saurials' appearance in a Dragon issue. Those were much better novels than the angst-ridden Drizzt series.
I was kind of gratified to notice a small feature on the map in the 3E book labeled "Moander's Road," and a minor god in the hueueueueuege list named "Finder."
My gaming experience has been limited to a single, currently-running campaign which is only vaguely set in the Realms. We're going to leave Toril behind, and the party expects me to get them to Celestia.
Sure, just because I'm the one playing the half-orc planeshifter, they think I'm the only one who can do things like cast a party-friendly fireball.
'Course, it came in handy against the Uberholder....
TWK
Eventually I discovered that RA Salvatore was not really the shiznat I thought he was, and I moved on to authors of quality (I recently rented Servant of the Shard but I couldn't get into it).
My latest novel experience was the trilogy beginning with Azure Bonds, which I got second hand, because of the saurials' appearance in a Dragon issue. Those were much better novels than the angst-ridden Drizzt series.
I was kind of gratified to notice a small feature on the map in the 3E book labeled "Moander's Road," and a minor god in the hueueueueuege list named "Finder."
My gaming experience has been limited to a single, currently-running campaign which is only vaguely set in the Realms. We're going to leave Toril behind, and the party expects me to get them to Celestia.
Sure, just because I'm the one playing the half-orc planeshifter, they think I'm the only one who can do things like cast a party-friendly fireball.
'Course, it came in handy against the Uberholder....
TWK
Apok said:
Halruaa, a place where Behirs are bred for the nobility to use as guards, breed them for miniature size to be used as leashed pets, and also breed them for a variety of colors (I distinctly remember teal and yellow).
A place where you're pretty much nothing if you're not a wizard. A place where they use a spell-bound dragon hatchling to smelt the gold. A place where they have Flying Ships.
And we get complaints about magical drainage ditches.
Halruaa is a high concentration of magic. Where Magic=Tech to the extreem. Period. It's easily removable.
Dark Psion
First Post
For the Maps!!!!!!
That and for the level of detail. Sure I can make my own game world, but sometimes it is nice to just set back and let someone else drive.
As to the "Mis-mash", I don't mind. I do like that they use real world history as a base, so that if I want to flesh it out, I just need to make a trip to the library.
The realms are great for "one nighter" adventures, just pick what kind you want to do; Dungeon, City, Ruins, Wilderness, or High Sea, somewhere in the realms, there is an adventure for you.
Many of the Novels are "pulp novel" quality, but even the bad ones give you an "insider" view of a section of the realms.
The only problems I have are:
The inconsitancy of Psionics in the realms. The rule books say no psionics, but the novels are full of psionic characters.
The old FR series came out too fast, but now it come out too slow to feed my addiction (Need more cheeeeese!!)
And the realms purist can be anoying. My personal realms have a Half-evlen nation on the Dragon Coast, Nimbral is an Island of Psionics and I adapted the Spintered Mind from Dragon #281 into a psionic branch of the Harpers.
I posted some of that once and got a lecture on how wrong I was.
That and for the level of detail. Sure I can make my own game world, but sometimes it is nice to just set back and let someone else drive.
As to the "Mis-mash", I don't mind. I do like that they use real world history as a base, so that if I want to flesh it out, I just need to make a trip to the library.
The realms are great for "one nighter" adventures, just pick what kind you want to do; Dungeon, City, Ruins, Wilderness, or High Sea, somewhere in the realms, there is an adventure for you.
Many of the Novels are "pulp novel" quality, but even the bad ones give you an "insider" view of a section of the realms.
The only problems I have are:
The inconsitancy of Psionics in the realms. The rule books say no psionics, but the novels are full of psionic characters.
The old FR series came out too fast, but now it come out too slow to feed my addiction (Need more cheeeeese!!)
And the realms purist can be anoying. My personal realms have a Half-evlen nation on the Dragon Coast, Nimbral is an Island of Psionics and I adapted the Spintered Mind from Dragon #281 into a psionic branch of the Harpers.
I posted some of that once and got a lecture on how wrong I was.
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