The New Forgotten Realms - (About) A Year Later

[Mercurius]

How does it fare? Are people liking it now? It almost seems like FR has dropped off the face of the gaming discussion planet...

Have diehards forgiven WotC or merely moved on while perhaps nursing still-smoldering resentment? Has anyone been converted?

And the bottom line: Is anyone even using it as their primary setting?

I am wondering how this new sparse approach to settings is going to turn out. I'm guessing that many DMs relied upon supplement after supplement for their campaigns but now every setting is only getting two books, the Campaign Guide and the Player's Guide. I suppose this is easy enough for Eberron users who can pillage the used book shelves for 3.5e books. The same doesn't work quite as well for post-Spellplague Faerun, though.

 

[Jack99]

Its the world of the RPGA, which is allegedly bigger than ever before. So yeah, lots of people play in FR.

 

[Mercurius]

Ah, I did not know that. Fair enough. So what do they use for material? Do they flesh out the world themselves? Cobble together stuff from prior editions? Or just use what is in the two 4E books?

 

[Shemeska]

It used to be my 2nd favorite setting (outside of Planescape), but I no longer play in the Realms, and I don't know of any groups in my area that are playing in the 4e version (even those using 4e rules seriously don't care for the 4e treatment of the setting). The setting seems to cater to people who weren't FR fans, to the extent that it destroyed much of what FR fans enjoyed about the setting in the first place. I would happily join a pre-Spellplague FR game (regardless of ruleset), but the 4e post-Spellplague Realms seems like an entirely different setting to me, and one that I'm not interested in. Ruleset isn't important to me, but the fluff content is. I would happily buy a Greenwood/Boyd/Schend/etc 4e book that pertained to the Realms timeline prior to the large-scale 4e setting changes.

Ongoing support has been pretty slim, and DDI only, and if you're not part of the RPGA, the setting would seem to be a shadow of its former self in terms of being used outside of the RPGA. Additionally, I suspect that many RPGA players aren't firm fans of FR, it's just that FR happens to be the chosen primary RPGA setting so that's what they'll play in order to play within the RPGA.

The Origins and Ennies showing for the 4e version of the Realms I would think revealing about its reception.

 

[SteveC]

I'm liking it a lot. I've been playing quite a bit of the RPGA events, and I've noticed they've managed to really bring forth some of the classic plot elements while keeping it fresh for the new edition. A lot of the modules refer back to elements from the previous edition, and deal with factions who were upset at what happened trying to turn back the clock.

In previous editions I didn't have any time for the realms, because there really wasn't anything for heroes to do in it that couldn't be better solved by an NPC. That's not the case anymore.

There are still some folks who hate it, but by and large I think that the RPGA crowd is bigger than I've ever seen it before, and people are enjoying the heck out of it.

Obviously, just my $.02...

--Steve

 

[Dire Bare]

It used to be my 2nd favorite setting (outside of Planescape), but I no longer play in the Realms, and I don't know of any groups in my area that are playing in the 4e version (even those using 4e rules seriously don't care for the 4e treatment of the setting). The setting seems to cater to people who weren't FR fans, to the extent that it destroyed much of what FR fans enjoyed about the setting in the first place. I would happily join a pre-Spellplague FR game (regardless of ruleset), but the 4e post-Spellplague Realms seems like an entirely different setting to me, and one that I'm not interested in. Ruleset isn't important to me, but the fluff content is. I would happily buy a Greenwood/Boyd/Schend/etc 4e book that pertained to the Realms timeline prior to the large-scale 4e setting changes.

Ongoing support has been pretty slim, and DDI only, and if you're not part of the RPGA, the setting would seem to be a shadow of its former self in terms of being used outside of the RPGA. Additionally, I suspect that many RPGA players aren't firm fans of FR, it's just that FR happens to be the chosen primary RPGA setting so that's what they'll play in order to play within the RPGA.

The Origins and Ennies showing for the 4e version of the Realms I would think revealing about its reception.

Ongoing support for the Realms is exactly what was promised for all campaign settings at 4th Edition's launch. The player's guide, the campaign guide, and adventure, and articles on DDI. That's what Eberron got, and probably what Dark Sun will get too. To make it sound like support is drying up is disingenuous. And, RPGA support is no small potatoes.

I disagree that the updated setting somehow caters to the non-FR fan and leaves "true" FR fans out in the cold. While FR hasn't been my primary campaign, I've enjoyed it for over a decade for tabletop gaming, computer gaming, and novel reading. This has not changed with the 100-year jump and the Spellplague. In fact, I think that the changes have invigorated a tired setting and made things more interesting and exciting for me.

Obviously, YMMV, but I'm tired of folks who didn't care for the setting changes posting with the implicit assumption that their opinion is shared by everyone else, or even a significant majority of fans. Or even a significant minority of fans!

 

[Jack99]

The Origins and Ennies showing for the 4e version of the Realms I would think revealing about its reception.

So because the 4th version of FR was not nominated for setting of the year, the reception has been poor? Interesting argument. I wouldn't use it in a public debate though. Besides, awards = nepotism at its worst, so really, I wouldn't put too much stock into those.

I will give you this though - 4e FR pissed off a lot of 3.x fans (or at least a lot of vocal ones) but I also think (based on anecdotal evidence, just like your own) that it brought a lot of old school fans back into the fold, after driving them away during the last 10 years of fluff-bloat.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I play the realms still, just not the new setting they made for 4e is all. I wish em well but they lost all the realms fans around here.

 

[jdrakeh]

Obviously, YMMV, but I'm tired of folks who didn't care for the setting changes posting with the implicit assumption that their opinion is shared by everyone else, or even a significant majority of fans. Or even a significant minority of fans!

It's only three or four posters here, really. If you read any 4e FR thread you can pick 'em out and put them on your Ignore List pretty quick. I'd like to say that I hate recommending the use of the Ignore List function but, really, I don't. Being petty pays off.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I still like it, but i think the opinion of many hardcore FRers have not changed. Candlekeep is still a hotbed of anger regarding the new FRCS, and the Wotc boards are only now slowly recovering. And as this thread shows: who hated it on first sight is mostly hating it now. Who liked it (like me) still likes it.

EDIT: I will note that, forex, Candlekeep has just broken in new measures (see here) to fight the ridiculous attacking of anything 4e FR. Commendable, but a little late.