Again, this might be a long one.
Majoru Oakheart said:
But the thing about FR is that often the campaign setting comes out and it doesn't mention any details about a town. Then an author decides to set a novel in that town a year later and creates an NPC for his story who lives there. Then a year later, a sourcebook comes out about that area with stats and information on that NPC. Then another author reads the sourcebook and decides to use that NPC in another novel.
However, if you've just read the FRCS you don't know anything about that. In the FRCS it was just some small town with no real background. But if you start a game set in that town without having read all the novels and all the supplements you might be missing stuff. Which is a feeling I don't like. I like knowing everything there is to know about an area. I just don't have time to do that much reading, as much as I'd like to.
Well, this is a problem with firstly how much detail you can pack into a campaign setting book, and secondly one of the consequences of a metaplot. Naturally, there has to be a decision as to how much detail they can put into a book. Too much at it becomes overburdened with details and can really overwhelm the reader. You can hardly have a Ptolus level of detail for each and every town in the entire Realms. There might also be objections from people who don't want too much detail, so they can stick in their own taverns and temples and shops etc.
I personally think that the FRCS managed this quite well. They give over a hundred and thirty pages to the geography of the Realms, but still couldn't fit everything in. The only real way I can see of allowing people to know everything about a town without giving them that much reading is to make smaller towns. Either that or they concentrate on the Heartlands, which are Waterdeep, Cormyr, the Dalelands and the Western Heartlands. That might work, though plenty of people would miss various areas.
Secondly, novel writers have always put in new NPC's, plots, groups in towns and cities, and often done lasting damage to them, or added to them. Short of updates in Dragon or in a document released every year updating the Realms, nothing can really be done about this, unless you stop the Metaplot in the Realms.
This is a good idea. I think they probably won't want to do it however, as no one is going to buy novels if you can read a document that summarizes them all.
I think lots of people would still read the novels for the pleasure of them. Apparently the Novel section of the Realms is quite a big bigger then the gaming section, in terms of revenue.
That's not what I meant. I mean there shouldn't be SO much information that things like "You didn't know that this country was at war with this one?" is a surprise to me after reading the FRCS. Or maybe that isn't even so bad but when I hear "You didn't know that the elves had a tree where all of their souls go when they die and that it is what powers magic on their island? It says so in this novel here." is a surprise.
Recently I've taken a great interest in learning more about the Realms since I became one of the LFR administrators. I haven't had time to read through my Grand History yet, though I'm trying. It's just so dry and bland to read.
Ah, I see now. Well, I agree to an extent. The new campaign setting book could do a much better job of presenting what the Realms is to the public. The point about the Tree of Souls, incidentally, is wrong. Elven souls upon death normally go to Arvandor, the home plane of the Elven Gods. The Tree of Souls was created during the Sundering, when a circle of high elven mages sacrificed themselves to change the face of Faerún, creating the island of Evermeet. Their souls were absorbed into the tree, which powers High Magic on Evermeet (or in Myth Drannor now)
Anyway, the Grand History of the Realms is indeed a bit dry. It's meant as a Reference book, rather then something that you should read in one sitting.
But it lacks so much information. The Eberron Sourcebook tells you basically everything you need to know about the world. The later books are all about smaller details that you may or may not want. If you don't buy Dragonmarked you might not know that some people who have Dragonmarks can do some different stuff with them than usual, but that isn't a big deal.
If you don't buy one of the FR novels you may not know that the King of Cormyr died or that an evil wizard has placed a curse on an entire country or any number of big deals.
Again, that's something that the next campaign setting book could clearly improve on. It didn't need the big reset button being pressed to achieve this. The fact Azoun IV died is mentioned in the FRCS though.
They could have addressed SOME of them, I admit. However, the pure weight of the Realmslore won't go away without a reset. They could come out with a new LGCS that just avoids going into details about the world so that it looked easy to learn. However, they would still get players showing up at a table who had read all the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ed stuff about the Realms and wouldn't hesitate to correct "mistakes" that DMs and other players made because they don't know all the details.
Surely this is a problem with the players though, correcting DM's? It could happen in any setting really. You could, however, tell players in your group that this is MY realms, and that some changes can be expected, whether minor or major. Making the setting your own should be encouraged! It even is, in the Running the Realms section. The setting shouldn't be blamed for the silly things some players do.
Cadfan said:
People who use published settings often like, in fact insist, that the campaigns they create in those settings abide by canon. If they didn't like canon, they'd probably just homebrew.
The second a PC in your home campaign makes his first decision, the campaign has changed from the canon. In my own game, I follow the Realms Canon for the most part, with the exceptions that there has been no Elven Crusade, Yúlash is a free and independent city thanks the to work of the PC's etc etc. I bought the Realms books because I like the setting, and it saves me the hassle of creating my own. I've adapted the setting to serve my needs though.
Traycor said:
I find this to be a curious statement. We have no idea how the changes have been implimented because we've not seen the setting yet... In fact, I'll go one step further. The book is still being written, so the implimentation hasn't even been done.
Actually, we know of how some of the changes are being implemented. The last page of the Grand History of the Realms showed us some. So it's incorrect to say that we've not seen how they are implementing the changes.
It's the idea of a setting "shaped from below", where there are no high-level NPCs from the start.
