What's so special about Forgotten Realms?

[questing gm]

Should I call in the scribes from Candlekeep?

I think we can simply say that there 2 ways of thinking about the Realms. There's too much details and there's a lot of details.

Personally, I like having the details and it's the reason why I buy a published setting. If I wanted a product to give me 'creative space' then I wouldn't need a campaign setting to provide me that space. The reason why I bought the FRCS was because I wanted to play in the Realms and it better had all the details I need to run a game.

I liked the history, the regions, the different flavors that you could do in the same continent and the level of attention that is paid to the tiniest speck of detail (oh yes, the Volo's Guides is still my favorite book of the bunch). And even with the number of uber NPCs, there were more uber villains for the PCs to thwart. So there's no excuse that the PCs don't get the limelight.

 

[Hereticus]

I was a fan of the early stuff, when they concentrated more on the 'faerie olde England' aspect; the Dales, Waterdeep, Cormyr, etc and not so much on the kitchen sink approach to fantasy. I loved the detail, but soon it became too much detail.

Buying the realms is alot like buying a car.

At its core it is a vehicle to get your group to where you want to go. That destination being an enjoyable role playing experience.

Some cars go faster, have a more spacious inside, or come in a different color or edition.

Whether its Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragon Lance, Eberron, or any homebrew, each fits one or more niche of player. And the best thing is that you do not have to ride in a car you don't like, and if it's not perfect you can customize it by adding fuzzy dice or a house rule.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I think we can simply say that there 2 ways of thinking about the Realms. There's too much details and there's a lot of details.

God, how i hate this way of thinking. Its basically saying "there are those who love the FR lore and cannot get enough of it - and everybody else." Sorry, but there are multiple opionions on that subject in FR fandom - forex there are people like me who like accumulating lore but want to see it cut back now and them, in the best case to the level of the Grey Box. There are many people who like FR in their own way - not only "Lorekeepers from Candlekeep" and "Lorehaters Incorporated."

 

[questing gm]

God, how i hate this way of thinking. Its basically saying "there are those who love the FR lore and cannot get enough of it - and everybody else." Sorry, but there are multiple opionions on that subject in FR fandom - forex there are people like me who like accumulating lore but want to see it cut back now and them, in the best case to the level of the Grey Box. There are many people who like FR in their own way - not only "Lorekeepers from Candlekeep" and "Lorehaters Incorporated."

But we can agree upon that the level of detail is what that is causing reactions for and against the Realms right?

From the beginning of this thread, FR seems to have taken quite some flak for being over-detailed which I don't think is a bad thing.

I love reading about Realmslore but I never said anything about disrespect against those who don't (and that's certainly not everyone else). I can understand why they don't like that sort of detail and just have different needs from a published setting.

 

[Ariosto]

Here's another vote for the value in the contents of that original, gray-green box. It's a classy presentation of some of the reasons Ed Greenwood has a reputation as one of the great DMs.

Trying to keep up with the volume of commercial "canon" -- especially with an ever advancing continuity -- can be pretty hard on someone trying to run a campaign of his own. The frequency of players who bring along such a baggage of assumptions can be a turn-off.

That is in my experience more frequent than with settings such as Greyhawk, Glorantha, Tékumel or Talislanta. A different attitude seems prevalent. To run "my" Forgotten Realms calls for more declarations and reminders that it is indeed my campaign (not, say, R.A. Salvatore's).

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Realms, like Draognlance, benefits from a fiction line that gives potential players a quick way into the game and a way to connect with the setting.

It's massive backlog of books can sometimes feel like work for a GM who isn't used to telling his players no or who is a compleatist.

My favorite Realms is probably 3e. Very detailed and lots of great sourcebooks. The details of 1st and 2nd are still very useful for this campaign setting as 3e didn't have a massive campaign change unlike 4e.

Forgotten Realms, for those who enjoy it, is as much about character and backstory as it is about adventure.

It's about having a place to originate from if you're a norse berserker or an elf bladesinger. Most concepts have a place to start at and most players are greatful for it.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I bought the FRCS when it came out for 3.0 because I needed adventure ideas and such, and it was a good buy. I have also run games in the realms form time to time and even played there. But I probably will never do so again for a few reasons.

One of my pet peeves is players who spend no in-game resources (skill points or trained skills) on knowledge-skills, but bring every bit of OOC and metagame information they have to the table, and let it spew out their character's mouths. It can be incredibly frustrating to have this happen, especially if you have two of these and they argue points of detail that no one else in the group knows or cares the least about. This is not only FR's problem, of course, but FR has been the most detailed campaign setting for the last dozen or more years.

Another reason is, related to the above, unwilling to spend the time or effort to keep up on Realms Lore. I do not want to buy multiple sourcebooks and novels to do this. I prefer a campaign world that does not change every time an author gets an idea in his head about how to make their new novel .. well ... novel (apologies)

The final reason is power. The Realms is far more super-powered than most campaign worlds. Chosen, the big E, etc. It is hard to jsutify why low-levels ahve to even step outside their door when multiple high level characters could solve the problem in heartbeats, and perhaps without even getting out of their easy chair.

So, of course this is all about me, but that is my view on the realms.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

The final reason is power. The Realms is far more super-powered than most campaign worlds. Chosen, the big E, etc. It is hard to jsutify why low-levels ahve to even step outside their door when multiple high level characters could solve the problem in heartbeats, and perhaps without even getting out of their easy chair.

I hear this much from folks who do not understand the realms. It's simple the big E can not get involed in every little detail, even if he could then the wizards of Thay, or mansoon or gods alone knows who else start to play big time. It is like chess the pawns and small pieces can move around the board. Once the big boys come into play the gloves come off, no one wants that so that leaves the pc's

Also the chosen are batties for the goddess of magic, sure most are good but mystra is about the spread of magic not happy happy joy land


Just a thought

 

[Ariosto]

I picked up a 3E book used (missing the big map). I also have the 1st and 2nd ed. basic boxed sets, ten(?) or so of the regional supplements, and the City System and Ruins of Undermountain sets. That's a lot of material, albeit much less than many enthusiasts have. I never got into the novels and comic books, but have enjoyed some computer games.

When I run a game in the Realms, though, I'm not likely to use all that. It's too much even to carry around, unlike a setting of my own (much of which can reside in my mind). The books are just sources I plunder for ideas.

Any events in the books beyond the period of the initial "snapshot" are on some other time-line. Even the past might not be what it once was (thought to be). The game is about making history! Likewise, NPCs are not there to upstage PCs.

There's no need to "toss the baby with the bath water." It is sort of a drag sometimes, though, having to sort the players from the pedants!

 

[Barastrondo]

Speaking for myself: Forgotten Realms taught me a cubic buttload about good world design.

It was pretty inspirational to me in the same way. The 2e hardback was a real eye-opener about the kinds of things you could think about for customizing your game world, and it actually got me sitting down with graph-ruled composition books and trying my hand at world design for the first time. There was something really neat about seeing color illos of various priestly vestments, looking at how you could design your own gemstones and gem tables, how to build a two-page city treatment... between that and the old series of FR-based Dragon articles, I liked seeing how you could set up a world to unfold as you explored it.

I've never actually run an FR game, but I wound up getting a lot of use out of its materials, just by watching how they went at it. The sheer number of details tended to mean I'd often run across some level of world design that made me say "Huh, I never thought about that before," and consider whether it would be worth the time for the players.

Like food porn. The FR books had more lavish descriptions of what people ate locally than any other setting I'd seen — not just factual notes, but actually trying to make the food sound like something PCs would want to order. I started mucking around with food porn in my games, and to this day I'm glad I did so. Nothing quite brings the players into immersion in the same way as thinking about what their characters would like to eat.