Vote for your Forgotten Realms!

[Aegeri]

I would love to go back to the original setting pre-Time of Troubles stupidity, dump all the overpowered 50" thick metaplot armoured NPCs and everything else and have that as the base reboot. Otherwise they can just stick with going forward with the current timeline.

From what I've been reading, Dark Sun is definitely the approach I like. Take X time, set campaign in a canon around that time and say of existing books or similar "These are possibilities as to what might happen.

It would be so glorious, but I know it would never happen.

Edit: Wow the classic realms has some major support here. So good to see.

 

[Shazman]

The 3e era was a gaping hole in the poll options, honestly. I think it would have gotten a lot of votes. The 3e FR book is almost universally held out as a gold standard when it comes to showcasing campaign design. It's a good book.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the 4E campaign guide, which is a good example of what not to do with a campaign setting.

 

[Desdichado]

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the 4E campaign guide, which is a good example of what not to do with a campaign setting.

No, that opinion is not nearly so universal. Most of the shrillest complaints can be easily discounted, because they come with obvious fanboy baggage. And even those guys often admit that it'd be a pretty nifty setting, if it had a different name to it than FR.

 

[Aegeri]

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the 4E campaign guide, which is a good example of what not to do with a campaign setting.

I actually disagree, I don't mind it at all. My main complaint with 4E FR is that it often doesn't go quite far enough and that it really had an extremely uninspiring map.

 

[Shemeska]

No, that opinion is not nearly so universal. Most of the shrillest complaints can be easily discounted, because they come with obvious fanboy baggage. And even those guys often admit that it'd be a pretty nifty setting, if it had a different name to it than FR.

Compare the reviews of the 3e FRCS to the 4e FRCG even on just Amazon two years after the latter was published, the difference is pretty stark even when you remove any negatives that are poorly explained rage, or similarly poorly explained adoration.

And even if it did have some ideas that if stripped out have some creative merit, it's nigh impossible to extricate that from it having been done to a setting with more than two decades of material that was culled in favor of effectively a different setting with the same name. And for your daily dose of hyperbole: Go Bots might have had some fun points when I was 7 years old, but you'd have had people screaming (me included) if you took GiJOE off toystore shelves and tried to attach their name to Go Bots for the next year's toy marketing cycle.

 

[Bluenose]

I don't think it was so much that they had to as they felt that it would make FR more accessible to enough people and convert enough FR haters and naysayers that it would be an overall improvement.

Frankly, had I been in charge, I would've done it very differently- but I prolly would have advanced the timeline by a century or so and thrown in a cataclysm to justify discarding all the baggage I didn't want; I do this with my home campaign periodically, too.

A look at how GDW did it at the end of the Megatraveller line when they advanced the timeline 70 years and 'altered' the setting might have given them some pointers. Although the fanrage isn't as bad this time round.

 

[Shazman]

I actually disagree, I don't mind it at all. My main complaint with 4E FR is that it often doesn't go quite far enough and that it really had an extremely uninspiring map.

From what I've been able to tell the 4E FR campaign guide, especially the maps, has been panned even by fans of 4E who agree with the idea of wiping out the setting to make it more "accessible" to new players.

 

[UniversalMonster]

From what I've been able to tell the 4E FR campaign guide, especially the maps, has been panned even by fans of 4E who agree with the idea of wiping out the setting to make it more "accessible" to new players.

Eh, whatever. As far as I'm concerned, the 4e Forgotten Realms are the best version of the setting that has ever been published. It's the only version since the 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures book (Jeff Grubb) that I felt comfortable creating my own stuff in because every previous version I've had is already over-built and over-detailed to the point that there's no reason to really use them; the 2E and 3E campaigns had played itself out before you even brought the book home. It was like "Oh where are we now? Tilverton? let's see. massive black hole. Mysterious. but the secret will be in another supplement.. Well, I guess we can't go there..Hey let's go to Cormyr! Oh wait. Need an adventuring company charter, and if your last name isn't Obarskyr you might want to keep a low profile."

I didn't have the grey box, though. But I definitely got the feel from previous versions that the FR was showcased as a setting that the PCs were meant to be witnesses and bit players to the genius of the authors, rather than the stars of their own tales.

I don't really have much sympathy for the canon-experts. Hope that's not too offensive.

 

[Shazman]

The whole idea that people couldn't run the Forgotten Realms because it had too much detail or lore is just a cop out. You're the DM. Run it like you want to. Besides, the Realms was big and diverse enough to find plenty of place to be your "sandbox" if that's want you wanted. Why can't people be honest, and just say they don't like the Realms instead of acting like their hands are tied by the "massive amount of FR lore" so they couldn't run it.? Talk about hyberbole.

 

[Greg K]

I didn't have the grey box, though. But I definitely got the feel from previous versions that the FR was showcased as a setting that the PCs were meant to be witnesses and bit players to the genius of the authors, rather than the stars of their own tales.

Not how I recall the 1e version at all.