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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Novem5er" data-source="post: 4833016" data-attributes="member: 57859">I've often asked myself this same question, "what makes the Realms special?" Instead of directly answering, I'll share my experience with the realms. I wonder if other gamers have had similar experiences.2e: Played in a few campaigns with the same group of players. They'd already been playing for 10 years, off and on, with a revolving set of characters. Their version of the Realms was pretty simple. They'd carved out a section of land near the Moonsea that they called their own, and they went on adventuring campaigns from there. We did Dragon Mountain (not an FR product), fought demons in Myth Drannor, and battled Zhent warbands on occasion. Most of our adventures were heavy on "in the moment" detail, but they did not rely heavily on history and politics.These games were fun, but it's because the players WERE the power players in the area. We focused on such a small area of the Realms, that nobody really cared much about the Harpers or Elminster. The Realms were really just used as a backdrop canvas to give context to the immediate world around us. "What's over those mountains?... ah, okay, we should go there sometime."3e: Some other friends bought the FRCG and we all flipped through it. OVERLOAD! We all liked it, and were impressed, but we never really got a campaign off the ground. Us younger group just weren't experienced enough to digest all the info in the book. Sure, we attempted to just pick an area and run with it, but we always got the feeling that weren't doing the world justice. I mean, you have this giant atlas in your hand and you're just going to ignore 90% of it? I was known as the DM of our younger group and I didn't want to touch the realms. We just played homebrew campaigns that had Realms elements, like the Underdark and some of the pantheon (which we were more familiar with than the pseudo-Grayhawk in the core books).My OLD gaming group ignored 3e Realms b/c they already had so much 2e stuff. They updated their characters to 3e rules, but they never bought any of the new FR books. Why bother, other than to get up to date NPC stats... but they never used the big NPCs anyway!4e: I broke down and bought the FR books. Why? Soley because of the Spellplague and the 100 year advancement. I have to be honest. I love a good apocolypse. I love when new artists create their own vision of an established brand. I loved the new Star Trek! RE: the Realms, I loved the idea of them killing off lots of high level NPCs. I loved the idea that the geography changed. I loved the design philosophy that less is more.I started a campaign in Loudwater, just as the new FRCG suggests. We've been playing every week for 6 months now and, in fact, I even pulled in my old 2e buddies! One of them likes the new Realms, and the other one hates it... but she still likes the game. Her complaints usually center on "where's the detail?" But as we're playing, that usually isn't a problem. Reading the Realms and playing the realms are often two very different things.Running FR in 4e? Hmm... sometimes frustrating when trying to build a story. Who the heck are the Phaerimm? The Gray Vale is a trade hub... but from where? None of the rivers connect to anything. If the Netherese just blew up Tilverton, why don't they just invade Cormyr or the Dales?These aren't too important when playing an adventure, but it gets a little difficult when constructing stories. My players and I are all old enough now where simple dungeon crawls or "kill the bandits" just isn't fulfilling. On the PLUS side the new realms has a lot going for it:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Open spaces! Kindom borders are really fuzzy now and most places aren't powerful enough to control/patrol every square mile they claim. Lots of places for me to write in little features and for players to carve out a place of their own.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The PCs ARE the heroes! There are no, and I mean NO, good aligned super-heros NPC statted out in the book. Heck, there aren't but a few that are even mentioned! One of my old 2e players commented the other night "so evil is pretty much winning, huh?" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> That's where we come in, I responded.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lots of hooks. The 4e designers did a good job with providing a list of threats that will make a game feel like the Realms. Some of these threats are old (the Zhents), but even these are changed. My 2e player laughed outloud when she found out what happened to all the Red Wizards. "Serves 'em right!" she said. Even the "new" threats have a history to work with; the Shadovar and the Blue Flame all have roots in previous editions.</li> </ul>Now, the funny thing about the "editions wars" is this. I would not even be playing D&D right now if it weren't for 4e, and I certainly wouldn't have bought any new FR books. HOWEVER, now that we are 6 months into a campaign, are higher level, and want to make our mark on the world... I've been reading the older 3e and even 2e books to get more detail on the world! Our campaign is centering around the actions of the Netherse empire, and I've now spent countless hours reading the 2e Netheril campaing book, the 2e Anauroch book, and the 3e FRCG and other books.See, the funny thing about the argument of 4e removing all the detail of the Realms is that... the lore is all there. It's just printed in old books that would cost WotC millions to reprint and try to sell. Yes, some stuff may have been invalidated or no longer usable (if a kingdom disappeared), but I'm using so much of the old material with just little twists. The Bedine are no longer desert nomads... but parts of their culture still remain. So to answer the question of the thread. What's so special about the Realms? The detail that has been developed over 20 years, and is now boiled down into a core set of realms and bad guys. All the history is still there, but for me, now it's in a usable format that leaves room for the players to still uncover mysteries and become leaders and heroes.</blockquote>

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