Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 3976062" data-attributes="member: 7635">I'm sorry, but I'm going to call you to task on this...Second edition had no default setting. None. I have no idea where people get this memory from. The second edition PHB had no Realms references at all. No Elminster, no Cormyr, no Selune, NONE. The spells continued to use the Greyhawk wizard names (Bigby, Melf), the area that discusses specialty priests lists no FR deities (only sample portfolios for you to use and some vague guidelines for assembling specialty priests. Heck, the example SP is DRUID). The DMG lists no info on Realms world, and its (small) section of artifacts sill discuss Vecna and Kas. The Monster Compendium has monsters culled from every D&D setting (out at time of print) so it had Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Realms, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, and Dragonlance monsters listed in it, invoking a feeling of no setting (or generic sampling) than realms specific. Moving beyond the core: the complete fighters, wizards, and thieves handbooks are setting neutral and do not discuss any cultural element that would tie it to the realms specific. Complete Priests (and fine place to highlight FR's gods) instead list generic "God/dess of X" specialty priests. Complete Book of Dwarves and Gnomes/Halflings do not specifically mention their realms subraces (other than a mention of Furchin, but it equally mentions Kender) or deities (which they shared with GH, btw). Only Complete Elves seems to mention in detail Correllon and Co and discuss Realm-specific subraces like Avarial. Complete Book of Humanoids discusses Saurials, so I guess you can concede That one. All the later Completes (Bard, Druid, Ranger, Paladin, Ninja, Barbarian) all again remain setting neutral. After that, its a mixed bag. Sure, their were wild mages in Tome of Magic (with a Toril-origin) but Book of Artifacts, Monster Mythology, and Legends and Lore remain Realms free. Some settings get rolled into Realms (Maztica, Al-Quadim, Kara-tur) but they have small shelf-life anyway. The Player's Options books avoid setting as well to purely focus rules (though Spells and Magic does reprint the Crusader, Monk, and Shaman who first appeared in Faith and Avatars. Oddly, the Mystic does not get reprinted). That pretty much sums up the "core rules" of 2e, and aside from some small mentions (completely out of context) there is jack-and-squat about Realms in it.So where does this "2e=Realms" myth come from? Mostly three things. 1.) Realms was the only "generic fantasy" setting TSR put out for a long time (most others had some twist to them, like Dragonlance, Ravenloft, or Dark Sun or were supported spuratically like GH or Mystara) and TSR supported it heavily with sourcebooks, box sets and novels. 2.) All TSR media of those days (video games, etc) tended toward Realms as its setting (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Pool of Radiance) save for many of the secondary novel lines, a handful of Gold-Box games set in Dark Sun, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft, a crappy Ravenoft fighting game, and Planescape: Torment. 3.) Intense coverage of the setting in Dragon. Many reoccurring articles in Dragon (Elminster's Guide, Vodo's Guides, Wyrms of the North, Ecologies/Monster Hunter's Guides) had a Realm's bend to them, creating a feeling of heavy support and making the Realms fleshed out beyond most other settings which was supported "equally" at the time. The result was a very odd memory of 2e: while its secondary publications often made it seem Realms was the default setting, the core-books and actual game held truer to its Greyhawk naming roots and was very vanilla.</blockquote>

Verification