Majoru Oakheart said:
It, however, reads to me as hollow words for anyone who knows anything about the setting.
The people who dismiss "The Concerns of the Mighty" are ones who've formed false impressions of the Realms from hearsay. Any kind of in-depth reading shows that that sidebar is an excellent but brief summary of a subtle, exquisitely complex, quite consistent milieu of high-level intrigue: everything in it is borne out directly in the lore.
Arnwyn said:
Absolutely so. I've never understood it either - and certainly no on on ENWorld (or elsewhere) has ever put forth and even half-coherent argument as to why there might be a problem.
Over hundreds of these threads, I've not read one such argument that was either coherent or well informed. Perhaps even more strikingly, in every case the poster either claims this 'problem' is suffered by notional 'other people' or says how they cleverly fixed it in their campaign, usually by doing exactly what the sources suggest.
Of course, some people quite legitimately prefer settings with a thinner high-level stratum, where PCs get to be the biggest guys around more easily, but this shouldn't be confused with the utter Chinese-whispers fantasies others spread about the Realms.
ruleslawyer said:
. . . I don't for the life of me understand how anyone can reasonably expect people playing a game to be required to consult novels for purposes of reference.
Unfortunately, when a world built 'as if real' is often reduced in narrowly focused sourcebooks to a 'campaign milieu in which to base adventures and characters, place dungeons, etc.', basic information like what merchant caravans are like and why
gates aren't used for large-scale trade get shunted into novels (here,
Hand of Fire and
Swords of Dragonfire).
My guess is that Ed originally wrote in all these folks without considering the effects of ubiquitous teleportation and divination effects.
Maybe in the 60s, but the published setting considers this thoroughly, assuming many counters to farscrying and translocation spells, such as wards, so that using them is often a difficult, even dangerous magical chess game (see, for instance, the section on guardianship magic in
Volo's Guide to All Things Magical).
Barastrondo said:
If it's demonstrably false, though, it just isn't being demonstrated in ways that are correcting the general perception.
Who knows what the general perception is? I'm not so pessimistic as to think a view without basis in the sources is so prevalent. But yes, Wizards have failed to take basic steps to amend these canards. I'll repost this example. In the lead-up to the 2001
FRCS, Rich Baker wrote:
Finally, we’ve decided to shift the spotlight of the game materials toward the player characters by highlighting villains, challenges, and adventure sites. This isn’t Elminster’s world. This is the world where your player characters are engaged in writing the story of their deeds, their defeats, and their triumphs.
But they didn't take the spotlight off Elminster. Instead, they formalized him as an 'iconic character', redesigned his look to be more active and adventurous, put him at the front of the setting book, kept his face on the Realms homepage and insisted that he introduce it over Alaundo, published two more novels and several short stories starring him and a short-story collection with him in the middle of the cover, led the promotion of an adventure with his tower exploding...
So when it's claimed that new and severe fixes are needed, when obvious and long-called-for ones weren't tried, who, in the light of this publishing history, is convinced?
amethal said:
As far as I'm concerned, the FR campaign setting itself isn't canon. The DM is free to do what he likes with it.
This being Ed Greenwood's own attitude, which he made clear through the framing devices of the original
Dragon articles and the Old Grey Box. Wizards decided to stop using these devices, instead promoting their novel-driven official timeline, and now say some people worry about canon too much!
Eldragon said:
With so many high level NPCs, every plot seems to revolve around saving the realms from evil on an epic scale (One could argue that is the whole point of the FR books, but I digress).
This is nothing more or less than the downward spiral the books department made for itself when Elminster's popularity as a sage led to his being statted in
Dragon #110 then misused as a novel protagonist over Ed's own favoured heroes, and the popularity of the Avatar trilogy set an appetite for End of All-type extravaganzas in direct contradiction to the Realms' natural focus on local concerns, down-and-dirty intrigues, and humanist sword and sorcery adventure.
Dr. Awkward said:
Yeah, the problem with FR isn't that high-level NPCs exist. It's that you can't throw a dead rat without hitting one.
The merest glance at the scale of the map shows this isn't distantly true.
ruleslawyer said:
I think Ed also went a little crazy with the high-level NPCs in 2e. There are a fair number of them in the original FR boxed set, but it really isn't until the FR Adventures hardcover that you suddenly not only see everyone gain 3-4 levels with each revision
In fact, Ed was reluctant to give NPC stats at all, thus the recommendation in the
DM's Sourcebook that they be freely adjusted for the particular campaign. The levels in
Forgotten Realms Adventures were contributed by Jeff Grubb, and most of those in the
Volo's Guides were added in by the editors. This is just the level scale inflating as it always does, not a specifically Realms thing at all.