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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Solmyr" data-source="post: 3940599" data-attributes="member: 19107">This was emailed to me by a friend of mine in reaction to the post about FR changes, he asked me to post this.If they eliminated the Chosen of Mystra, I'd be happy - no other "Chosen of {fill in random gawd}" has been so uberized/Monty Haulized/Munchkinized (same with Mystra herself, with a retroactive and unconvincing rationale "of course since the Realms is a magic-heavy setting, the Gawdess of Magic is naturally an Overdiety even more powerful than Ao, because all the Gawds depend on magic, and anyone who disagrees is a realms-bashing hater who just doesn't understand the setting") I don't dislike high-level NPCs, but I do dislike the attitude that so long existed that *only* the NPCs can and should have such a...limelight...and that anyone who disagreed was a realms-bashing hater.Heck, to me it even wouldn't be necessary to remove any of these NPCs - just eliminate the "Chosen" status and put them in the background as supporting cast, and stop writing novels that give people the "wrong" idea of what role-playing is all about (where "wrong" is defined as telling everyone else that you shouldn't play...in the style of the characters described in novels written for the setting - munchkinized). Oh, joy, a(other) powerful elven nation in the heart of blah blah blah...out of one frying pan, and into the fires of hell. Kill me now. We get rid of the ritualized adoration of The Chosen in exchange for a further emphisis on Elfoduleism - that heresy that goes beyond elfophilism and into veneration). As for the Realms as a whole, count me as a disillusioned fan who's been there since the grey box (heck, from the first Dragon article "Merry Month of...Myrtul?), and keeps hoping to find more ponies, and keeps buying the (RPG) products, but dislikes what a lot of the current fan-base apparently adores (does that mean I should get my way and they should suck eggs? No. But as for " Whether the perception is an accurate reflection of how the setting really works is" created by the vast majority of published materiels, with the positive exception of very recent years, and somewhat partially at that. - published materiels/adventures tended in the past to be retconned (Fey'ri, anyone?) into portraying Realms PCs as the bunglers who unleashed some threat that allowed the *NPCs* of the realms to display their heroism in thwarting, either that or as spearcarriers in someone else's (NPCs) story arc (the Avatar trilogy of modules, notoriously), or accessories that deigned to allow PCs to act as bit characters in sidestories of someone else's heroic endevours (suggestions of how to integrate countless novel-tie-in-products unleashed on the fan base over the years) - again, most Realms fans loved that stuff, and believe it's how things should be (they prefer living in someone else's shadow, even vicariously, not using gaming to escape from it "but it's believable that our PCs would be little-noticed peons during this or that series of events"), but not everyone did. And sure, you could diverge from it, but if you did that over time the published Realms products became increasingly superfluous if not counteruseful to one's campaign, because, as Realms fans will point out, the "Realms history/background, is one of the keys that makes the setting as rich as it is" - and if you deviate from it in your own campaigns, of course that's fine, but published materiels that follow on successively building on the changes introduced in various novels with their munchkinated NPCs (which we're lectured not to have at home) are increasingly estranged from one's own "Realms Reality" - to to the point of deteriorating utility. Not even a nod is given to possible alternatives in most of what is presented, and people wonder why some potential fans/RPG consumers don't pick up the Realms - an otherwise very interesting setting, built by many very creative people, but ones who long ago let the Novelization side of things trump the RPG setting side of things in their priorities and emphasis (I don't know, but maybe it's because that's where the money was - developing a setting either based on the priorities of making it useful for Role Playing vs that of Shared World Novels is very different).</blockquote>

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