I have watched FR since the grey box and 2e (well, I started in 2e and bought the grey box; my perspective is there, just not chronologically grey box).
Anywho, FR started as this really great little setting. I sat alone in my room listening to the Chieftains, and thinking about that backwater area called the Dales, and how cool Myth Drannor and Undermountain must be as Iconic adventure sites. I played in Undermountain; then we'd skip over to Ravenloft for our RPing, then escape and get to Undermountain; conceptually weird, but that was our group.
I got the Bloodstone trilogy, and dreamed about (but never achieved) a game in them. Stark contrast in terms of tone and quality, but I learned to be forgiving with FR.
3e had the gem of the FRCS. It really holds up as a great, mostly non-crunch, little book. Some other fun books have come out, but 3e had a lot of FR splatbooks designed to fill up space on my shelves without a real payoff.
3e in general was designed to try to be a simulation for how this stuff worked rather than an engine for adventure games (like 4e is). As such, the design principle for NPC heroes, the idea that people other than the PCs were available to save the world, was common practice. Having a dozen splatbooks detailing every corner of this fantasy world came down to the idea that someone somewhere was going to use all these numbers and characters, punch them into a computer, and make them go.
A little clockwork world.
I don't think many books really captured the essence of FR, including a number of the novels. The Drizzt books, and most of what Ed Greenwood wrote, rarely hit the mark for what FR meant to me. They were fun, for sure. Heck, I read a Drizzt book in the span of a Tom Waits CD.
[sblock=ooc]and I'm not even old! Interesting fact, my friends are the producers of this show called "once a thief", and they'd just ended the series by exploding the protagonists. The chief, whose actress was fantastic, was the only survivor and walked through the wreckage with Tom Waits' "it's Time, time, time" playing.
So my mother gets the CD, I steal it for the day, and I pop it in when I cracked open the book, the one where Wulfgar "dies". I kid you not, I made it to the chapter where, obviously, he gets it and THE SECOND I DO Tom Waits starts singing "it's Time, Time, Time", and I'm like "nooooooooooo!"
That is cool.
The book was predictable, and RA Salvatore thinks it's acceptable to name the king of the Dwarves "Melvin MuffinMasher" or something stupid (because, I suppose, all of us are also stupid), but that is a cool story.
And I complain about the names because Drizzt has the potential to be such a cool series, but the goofiness ruins the tone every time.[/sblock]
The only book I would say is worth reading is "City of Splendours" by Ed Greenwood and Elaine Cunningham. The best EG book I've ever read, and Elaine is phenominal as always. All the aspects of books I've read by either of them, but concentrated and matured stylistically, and I genuinely enjoyed the read. Go buy it now. Skip the parts with the famous NPCs, maybe, although even those are ok.
Moving on: For the above reasons, I don't have a big issue with FR4e. I don't know that FR ever wasn't a conglomorate setting. I think the timeline shift was important, and I agree that the thinning of the chaffe was very much needed.
Genasi and Swordmages are pure win in 4e, full stop.
I don't know that I agree with what they did to Halister Blackcloak, as he was by no means a hero. Killing off the uber-mages was a must. Mystra was a PC, and didn't make sense in a world with so many evil mages. Massive plot hole: "the effectual gods are all against your foes and you can't possibly lose".
I always play in my own setting. If I went back to high school, I would go back to the FR that I used to know (maybe). I won't be re-buying any FR books, I don't need them updated to 4e. I might buy modules. I'm too old for the books (except maybe cunningham's; she is an all-star).
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