The New Forgotten Realms - (About) A Year Later

[Forgember]

A close friend of mine was a huge fan of FR before the new 4e treatment. Now all he does is grumble about it, we are currently playing in the 4e realms so he has it seems decided to roll with the punches so to speak. I was never a HUGE realms fan like my friend so I have had little problems with the changes myself, actually overjoyed that Mystra was killed off. On the other hand I find the lack of content annoying, the 3.x FRCS book was probably the best CS book ever produced. The 4e version just seems like the footnotes.

 

[Belorin]

I've been running a Realms campaign since the gray box, thru four editions now and though the 4E changes were a shock it didn't really affect my game. We finished up our 3.5 game just last November with characters at 15th - 18th level and rolled up new characters for 4E, I moved the base of the campaign from the Gray Vale to the Moonshae Isles and we've been fighting the good fight against the Amnian invaders on Snowden.
When it came time to roll up new characters the loss of certain deities, the geographical changes and the effects of the spellplague itself were taken in stride by most of my players, some others eventually switched to Pathfinder, but they were unhappy with 4E to begin with.
The big arguments about loss of history or 'Iconic' NPCs don't really affect my game. The loss or reassignment of certain deities did kind of mess with some character concepts, but nothing that couldn't be fixed.
We play on.

Bel

 

[Tilenas]

I play in a 4E Realms group, and I think I they don't feel like the Realms anymore. That's not only because of the setting changes, but because 4E encourages a different playing style than was I was used to from 3.x Realms. Having said that, the whole Spellplague plot comes across as rather artificial and haphazard. It's almost as if the writers thought "Well, as we have to account for dragonborn, a new magic system, and the Points of Light philosophy somehow, we might as well break continuity."
In doing so, they fixed the non-issue of having too much fluff floating around limiting characters in their heroic exploits (IMO it doesn't). I can see how it was bothering people, but I always put it to good use to make the setting come to life.
Bottom line: I was very happy that Dark Sun is coming back, and I hope to migrate there the day it's released, because 4E + FR doesn't cut it for me, just like 3.x + what was left of Planescape didn't cut it.

 

[JeffB]

I had a thread awhile back asking about all the changes. Seems people were kinda split. After getting a chance to sit down with the 4E FRCG and dig in, I became a fan of the setting again (previously basically a lapsed OGB fan). I think FR was in dire need of this re-boot.

I can't say I love all the changes, but I did not during 1e to 2e either and especially disliked many of the changes in 3E, so no biggie- keep the changes I like, toss the ones I don't, just like I have with every other product I've ever bought in my life

 

[FunkBGR]

I don't use it, but i know of people who use it. They seem to like it.

The main thing I've heard people like about it is that you don't have NPC-Heroes around every corner like before.

 

[MrMyth]

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.

Parts in bold where Shemeska makes broad general assumptions on behalf of other gamers - and ones that I've found to not be true based on actually playing in the RPGA and as a part of the LFR community.

I was a fan of FR prior to the Forgotten Realms... though more for reading about than gaming in. These days, I'm a fan of gaming in it - the setting is more accessible than ever. There are elements I miss, certainly. (Finder and the Saurials is a quick one that comes to mind.) There are other elements that pretty much remain constant (Waterdeep, Cormyr, etc), and there are plenty of new elements that are very, very cool (Returned Abeir). I'm sure there are many former FR plans who aren't a fan of the new setting, and Shemeska is free to feel that way - but there are also plenty of FR fans who are just fine with the new setting, and I have to object to Shemeska trying to speak (incorrectly) on behalf of them.

Of the RPGA players in my local area, a lot are FR fans. From those who simply played in the setting previously, to those who collected all the books, to those who simply pattern every character after Drizzt. There are certainly others who didn't experience FR before, and are just playing it because it is the core living setting - but they are enjoying the new FR as well, and I'm not sure how that would be a mark against it. Implying that only 'purists' should be able to enjoy the setting is an elitist attitude that I'm not a fan of.

 

[Shemeska]

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.

The second point there I suppose is quite possible, and it falls outside of my immediate sphere of experience. I got into the setting in 3.x, and so did several of my players, and now we barely recognize the 4e version - but none of us had 1e/2e experience with it (though I and one player/DM have heavily used 2e fluff).

As for longer term / earlier edition fans and their reaction, I'm largely going off of what I've gathered from fans on Candlekeep and elsewhere online, and some seriously hardcore Realms fans I know locally. A lot of them seem to have gotten into the Realms because of the massive amount of fluff (be it catagorized as bloat or not), and now they've either not touched the 4e material and continued playing in earlier periods (one of my players ran a Netheril era campaign using 3.x rules, using 2e fluff which was quite fun) or moving on to other settings entirely.

My experiences may not mirror others of course, especially 1e fans of the setting that I don't have any experience with given my circle of gamers.

 

[Pamela]

I'm another Gray Box player who enjoys the 4e FR; enough so that I've finally started another online PbP in it. I find this edition brings me back nostalgically to the first. I can appreciate that there are those who enjoy the FR solely for its lore and novels but I've never been one of them.

 

[JoeGKushner]

After hearing about Dark Sun, one thing I wish WoTC would do is a 'rerelease' of the Forgotten Realms as it was initially with some of the better stuff picked for paragon paths, etc...

Me? I'm playing 4e set in 137X (3rd ed timeline.)

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

After hearing about Dark Sun, one thing I wish WoTC would do is a 'rerelease' of the Forgotten Realms as it was initially with some of the better stuff picked for paragon paths, etc...

Me? I'm playing 4e set in 137X (3rd ed timeline.)

Agreed! I loved the very 1st Realms boxed set, to me that is the Realms, not the..."Elminsterized" version we ended up with.
I don't like the 4th ed version, not because it's bad per se, but because of the incredible artificialness of what was done to the setting.

The "Time of Troubles" just to fit the 2nd ed rules in....*barf!* no need of that. and Cyric especially = complete loser as a deity (and that's a word I normally hate to use, but he is a complete drivleling non-entity gets to be a god and makes a mess of it and goes nuts...ah huh! You really think Ao would let that twerp keep that position AND cause all the trouble he has?)

It's like, any time there's a major change, they take it out on the spellcasters in the Realms....which I feel is grossly unfair and a nasty Deus Ex Machina.

High level NPCs weren't the problem, it was having everything mapped and over populated to heck...there was nothing "Forgotten" about it, nothing wild and mysterious...where as the 1st boxed set, was.
Also as I've repeatedly said, the 1st boxed set is beautiful, look at the artwork, it evokes a feel of a far more rustic, wild world.

Richard Baker's "Swordmage" books paint a really good, interesting picture of the new Realms, by the way
So I just think it (change to 4th ed Realms) could have been done better.