What I don't get RE: FR and High Level NPC's

[Xethreau]

IDK, what's the point of even mentioning Elminster or Drizzt if they just sit on their bums all day?

 

[Faraer]

It really works for Greyhawk, but that's largely because folks like Mordenkainen and Robilar were mercenary bastards during their adventuring days and are essentially mercenary bastards (or maybe interested in some Balance-thingy) since settling down.

The motivations, aims and strivings of such folk in Faerûn are no less complex or diverse. None of them are simplistically to 'fight evil' outside internet fantasy. The good-evil framework itself is imposed, in this discourse, from outside: it's not how many folk of Faerûn see things except a few religious fanatics.

I feel that at some point, beloved characters need to be written out of the story and let a new generation of characters come into play. Preferably these new characters have not achieved godhood.

Yes, in principle. But the situation we have is that out of Ed Greenwood's chosen story protagonists, the Knights of Myth Drannor are finally getting the spotlight after 20 years; and the timeline jump means that we may never get a Mirt and Durnan novel, and many other heroes of the Realms may never have their time in the sun: Randal and Silver Morn, Mintiper Moonsilver, Sharanralee Crownstar, the Company of Crazed Venturers, Mane's Band, Tamper Tencoin, and dozens more both in and out of print. At this rate, we're literally decades from that point.

If the threat is that big, neither one NPC nor a whole party can pull that off solo. This would be a team effort and would allow the DM to show the NPC's while still letting the PC's shine. And makes for a great story- "We stood back-to-back with Drizz't and Bruenor and fought off an army of orcs coming down out of the Spine of the World."

Quite so. There are adventuring bands of proud lonely antisocial psychopaths who need no help from anyone. Most of them don't last long. Folk who achieve great things do it as much by who and what they know as how big a fireball they can make.

Some people like the 'just us against the world' vibe. I and others don't, at least not all the time. One size doesn't, and shouldn't be expected to, fit all.

IDK, what's the point of even mentioning Elminster or Drizzt if they just sit on their bums all day?

What? Manoeuvring against rivals and enemies, magical research, prayer, meditation, training, etc., creating works of art and craft, maintaining a social profile, managing retainers, travelling the Realms, travelling other worlds and planes, managing investments, going on adventures, mundane and magical espionage, crafting long-term enchantments such as wards, training apprentices, responsibilities in larger organizations, maintaining obligations due to alliances and agreements, conducting a primary occupation, manipulating others directly or incognito, reading broadsheets and chapbooks, miscellaneous acquisitive or benevolent works, romantic affairs, raising families, recovering from physical, magical and emotional injury, and eating, drinking, sleeping, living their lives, and other things the mighty of Faerûn do are not 'sitting on their bums'.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The funny thing is that if it's a problem now and that problem is solved by wiping the slate semi-clean, what happens when the novels start hitting again? Especially since they're cannon?

 

[MerricB]

The funny thing is that if it's a problem now and that problem is solved by wiping the slate semi-clean, what happens when the novels start hitting again? Especially since they're cannon?

Canon, Joe, not Cannon.

Honestly, it depends on the scale of the books. My favourite Realms book, by a long, long way, is Elfshadow. That book uses the background and canon of the Realms extremely well, but shouldn't do much to upset ongoing campaigns at all.

As opposed to, say, Crusade...

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Canon, Joe, not Cannon.

Honestly, it depends on the scale of the books. My favourite Realms book, by a long, long way, is Elfshadow. That book uses the background and canon of the Realms extremely well, but shouldn't do much to upset ongoing campaigns at all.

As opposed to, say, Crusade...

Cheers!

I agree with what you're saying. For me though, most of the FR books I can think of off the top of my head have a huge scale going on. Year of the Dragons... Year of the Drow.... etc...

Best solution to me would be to make the books non-canon and come out with a novel sourcebook every other year or so for those who want to add those elements. Freeze the timeline so to speak.

 

[Barastrondo]

The funny thing is that if it's a problem now and that problem is solved by wiping the slate semi-clean, what happens when the novels start hitting again? Especially since they're cannon?

I think it's really a matter of how they can manage the perception. There are plenty of folks arguing that NPC density and power level isn't a problem, but that doesn't really help much if too many people are taking away the perception that it's a problem, or if the "fixes" aren't widely intuitive or satisfying enough that it corrects the perception of the NPCs as "not problematic." Given what we hear about this change in the Realms, I would guess that the perception must still be a big problem in WotC's minds. Enough people continue to be of that mind that the designers want the solution (add quotation marks if you think it's more of a "solution") to stick in people's heads.

It's an interesting process to me, since I've been in the business of dealing with settings that may or may not have Big Damn Important NPCs, and watching how the players want or don't want to interact with them. I don't envy the WotC designers the task of figuring out which sacrifices to make in the interest of making the Realms seem more appealing to those that wrote them off a long time ago, and which elements must be retained for the majority of existing fans' goodwill no matter how the detractors hate them. I think they can create something good, though. It's entirely possible to take the basic concept and execute it in such a way that the existing fans say "Hey, that was a pretty cool way for so-and-so to go." I mean, a story about a crazy old Batman in a tank beating up Superman with Kryptonite fists would sound pretty terrible just as a series of teasers, and it could be bollixed up something fierce, yet the concept doesn't preclude a good story.

It's really going to rely on the execution. So I'm awfully curious to see where the arguments are a year from now.

 

[MerricB]

I agree with what you're saying. For me though, most of the FR books I can think of off the top of my head have a huge scale going on. Year of the Dragons... Year of the Drow.... etc...

Yeah. That's the sort of cross-branding that makes Brand Managers very happy... but I think, in the Realms' case, it didn't manage to sell very many RPG books.

Will they recognise that and do something about it? Possibly.

Cheers!

 

[Brewhammer]

I have played FR on several occassions and DM'd it as well. For me, yes these characters did pose a problem. I'm one of those crazies that feels compelled to stick to the lore of the world (I don't read all the novels or anything like that) but I do like to be true to the world itself. It's kind of annoying when I want a group of lvl 1 players to save a small obscure town from a goblin raid, only to look up that town and see that it has a lvl 10 guard, a lvl 12 wizard, and a temple with a lvl 16 cleric. In a place with a population of 100 or less. It's like... WHAT?! The wizard or cleric could blast the entire problem without barely lifting a finger. Even the fighter would have to be someone of great renown in the surrounding area to have reached such a high level, so the villagers would turn to him to mop up such a threat. That's lots of past combat right there, and against more than goblins.

If the local level 10 guard, level 12 wizard and level 16 cleric are posing a problem in your campaign... then lower their levels. There is nothing whatsoever stopping you from doing that.

It's the random lvl 18 wizards and mundane lvl 20 clerics that are getting the boot.

Perkins specifically referred to the 'nuking' of Mystra's Chosen. Hardly 'mundane.'

 

[Traycor]

If the local level 10 guard, level 12 wizard and level 16 cleric are posing a problem in your campaign... then lower their levels. There is nothing whatsoever stopping you from doing that.

True, but why should I need to? If no one uses these characters and they must be changed or ignored in practically every game, then I see no problems with the designers culling this sort of thing. It's needless work.

Perkins specifically referred to the 'nuking' of Mystra's Chosen. Hardly 'mundane.'

True again, but it was stated elsewhere (can't remember who specifically off the top of my head, but I believe it was Perkins) that Elminster and Alustriel aren't going anywhere. And I believe he used a description something akin to, "character like Drizzt, Elminster, and Alustriel aren't going anywhere".

So if you taking the 'nuking' statement along with the other statements, it sounds to me like the lesser known chosen are being killed or relocated, but the popular/well known characters are staying put.

Also, in light of other statements, the 'nuking' could refer to their god-like powers and not necessarily killing them. Without the Chosen of Mystra template, some of those chosen might be knocked down a few rungs to more manageable levels of power. It will hardly break FR to take away some of their immunities and deity level powers.

They might restat Elminster lower level since he had to learn his magic all over again (possibly) and might even remove his cleric levels since he can't exactly draw divine power from a dead Mystra. I still think he might wind up a demi god to get him out of everyone's hair though.

 

[Faraer]

I don't envy the WotC designers the task of figuring out which sacrifices to make in the interest of making the Realms seem more appealing to those that wrote them off a long time ago, and which elements must be retained for the majority of existing fans' goodwill no matter how the detractors hate them.

Describing and explaining a secondary world without a central defining story is really difficult.

Managing a shared world so that its original strengths are lived up to and not submerged (when the creator lives in another country), others' creativity is incorporated organically without their having to write pastiche, answering to the actual and perceived needs of adherence to multiple rulesets and diverse styles of play, past brand managers' different approaches, compromising this with an ongoing timeline and a more-profitable novel line, maintaining Hasbro-level profits with a form as non-mainstream as the setting sourcebook, trying to read audience preferences from sales data...

I don't envy the Wizards guys either, for a moment.

But when so much of the mismanagement is their own making, and several obvious and far less risky proposed policies are being rejected untried, even if what they're doing succeeds in its own aims, it still sacrifices much of what's good about the Realms -- including Ed Greenwood's entire project of progressively detailing the setting in print -- and it certainly is not the only single inevitable course they could take and won't be a 'Realms for everyone', as some of the PR claims.

If the local level 10 guard, level 12 wizard and level 16 cleric are posing a problem in your campaign... then lower their levels. There is nothing whatsoever stopping you from doing that.

Traycor doesn't have to do that because he's severely misremembering, or misreading, the Volo's Guides. Those numbers just aren't in the books: something like that sort of level (not the 16th) might occur in a town of thousands of people (not 100-person hamlets), surrounded by ten times that in rural population. The Volo's Guides don't describe typical places but major towns and a few villages of particular note, sometimes separated by hundreds of miles (which in a medieval/renaissance world, if not in modern America, is a really long way). The characters are of all sorts of alignments and personalities: their aims are as likely to go against the PCs' as to overlap with them. And again, none of the character stats published for the Realms are meant to be taken as anything more than rough rules of thumb, often made up by editors. Ed didn't want to include them at all. They can't be taken literally because different books use different calibrations of the level scale. And, repeating myself once more, it's a setting in which groups of like-minded friends consistently outmatch foes of much greater raw power, as one of its central motifs.

For me though, most of the FR books I can think of off the top of my head have a huge scale going on. Year of the Dragons... Year of the Drow.... etc...

Numerically they're in the minority, because it's only a segment of the novel audience for whom the big macroscopic events are a draw. To Wizards' credit, there are plenty of smaller-scale books, including the 'class' series and the Knights of Myth Drannor novels. But it's the nature of the 'event' series to get hyped.

Rich Baker has actually said he thinks they'll slow down the RSEs after the 2008 setting is done.