What's your favourite "Forgotten Realms" place?

[Peter Gibbons]

Thay all the way.

 

[Thomas Percy]

Sonn Rúndar, a dwarven citadel I developed in high school. Here it is 14 years later and I still find myself working on it even though I don’t use it in any particular fashion. I guess their culture, customs and courtesies have changed throughout the years as did mine. But I’ll tell you that it’s only getting better.

If you are interesting in making some free pics for it and pdf publishing of Sonn Rundar, give a sign to The Forge.

 

[Kuld]

If you are interesting in making some free pics for it and pdf publishing of Sonn Rundar, give a sign to The Forge.

Thanks, I’ll definitely consider it. Well, once I figure out how it works.

 

[genshou]

Sounds like a fun campaign. My players would be disappointed if they never met any of the iconics, which is why I never play in FR.

The following is taken right out of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book, copyright Wizards of the Coast via Ed Greenwood, Sean K Reynolds, Skip Williams, and Rob Heinsoo. I've formatted some parts in Dark Slate Blue for emphasis.

Faerûn is home to numerous established characters: Drizzt Do'Urden, Elminster, Scyllua Darkhope, and Artemis Entreri, just to name a few. But Faerûn is a big place–big enough for many heroes and many stories. Your campaign should focus on your PCs, with the rest of the world and the other characters as a backdrop.

It's okay to allow your PCs to cross paths with an important NPC once in a while (after all, these NPCs are part of what makes Faerûn a unique and colorful place), but your PCs should confront and explore the world on their own terms. When you create an adventure, create it for your PCs. Don't assume that some powerful or famous NPC is going to drop in and make things right if the heroes falter. Let your PCs handle the consequences of their own failures and reap the rewards of their own successes.

Whether you make an iconic NPC the focus of the game by showing them off as cooler than the PCs or by grotesquely murdering them, you're making a mistake in running the Realms. My DM was very good about making our characters the focus of the game, even though the iconic NPCs were out there and for most of the campaign doing things of greater import than we were.

It's possible to have a Forgotten Realms game without your PCs having to meet the iconic NPCs of the setting, though it's recommended you throw one in once or twice even for a brief encounter. Maybe after the high-level PCs undertake a quest of continental importance, Elminster comes to their aid to rescue a party member who had trap the soul cast on them, or one of Manshoon's clones confronts the PCs after they disrupt one of his grander schemes. Maybe the PCs encounter Elaith Craulnober on the streets of Waterdeep and stop him for a moment to ask for information on local events. These encounters should not be the focus of the campaign, but they do add flavour appropriate to the world in which the game is taking place. The only difference between this and having the PCs meet a heroic NPC in a homebrew setting is that they are iconic characters, so I don't understand why many hate them so much. They can make a location a lot more fun to play in.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Cormyr and Waterdeep.

My players can't seem to get enough of those two places, and I have a blast as a DM contrasting the different cultures through NPCs and in game descriptions.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

All my Forgotten Realms characters (all two of them) come from Cormyr.

One of mine did. The other came from Sembia.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Why do so many makes such a big deal of killing this or that iconic character in their FR games? They exist in the world and aren't the PCs. So why the DRIZZT IS TEH SUCK fetish? Honestly, I doubt that any of the non-Zhentarim iconic NPCs will ever make even a single cameo appearance in Pledge of Tyranny. Hell, I played in a game that went from 1st- to 30th-level and we didn't meet a single Chosen of Mystra, nor any R.A. Salvatore-created characters. We did meet Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun (sp?), but that's another story entirely.

It's all the uber-powered characters that get people all riled up. They tend to come in and "save the day" in alot of campaigns (granted one should blame those DMs for that...). Our group did meet Elminster once. It'd have been fun, IMO, if that group had met Cadderly. He's one of my few fave FR icon characters.

 

[Testament]

Thay, the Shaar or Haluura

 

[genshou]

It's all the uber-powered characters that get people all riled up. They tend to come in and "save the day" in alot of campaigns (granted one should blame those DMs for that...). Our group did meet Elminster once. It'd have been fun, IMO, if that group had met Cadderly. He's one of my few fave FR icon characters.

"Who's Cadderly?"

And thus we see the problem with Elminster. Every bloody FR player knows his stats. Everyone knows his history, what his signature spells are, what he had for breakfast on Tuesday...

Ok, maybe the books don't go into that much detail, but you see my point, I'm sure. A lot of players are like me, and haven't read all of the books. So we don't know much about some of the other less well-known iconics, but we wish we knew less about the "really famous" ones.

So what kind of an encounter with Elminster was it, and where did it happen?

 

[Tarangil]

One word: UNDERMOUNTAIN

I guess that would count as Waterdeep then. Since my groups always gravitated towards the city whether I liked it or not.

My runner up would be the Underdark