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Which Region in the Forgotten Realms and which Book?
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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 6578209" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>I would actually suggest the 2e setting box (particularly if you can find it used at a decent price). The 3e book will have lots and lots of stuff that's useless to you - about a fourth to a third of the book consists of mechanics (feats, spells, prestige classes, stats for NPCs), whereas the 2e box is almost statless. This leaves a lot more room for actual setting fluff. Also, you get more maps with the 2e box (2x 30 miles-per-inch for the Heartlands and 2x 90 miles-per-inch for a larger overview, compared to a single 120 miles-per-inch map for 3e). Also, 3e treated most regions equally when it came to detail, whereas 2e focused a lot on the Heartlands. That can be a good or a bad thing, depending on whether you want to play in the Heartlands or not - 2e has more info on Cormyr and the Dalelands, whereas 3e has more info on, say, Aglarond or Calimshan.</p><p></p><p>The 3e book was great for its era, and tried really hard to bring out the setting "fluff" through the "crunch" - for example, Amn is known for its mercantile culture, so people from Amn can take the Silver Palm feat giving bonuses to Appraise and Bluff. But 5e doesn't have that kind of "high-resolution" mechanics, so a lot of those rules are wasted unless you're actually running 3e (and many of them were revised for 3.5e in Player's Guide to Faerûn as well).</p><p></p><p>I would not suggest buying the 4e book, as they warped the setting a <strong>lot</strong> for 4th edition (including things like moving the timeline up a hundred years), to the extent where it's pretty much a different setting with many of the place names being the same. 4th ed Forgotten Realms is in many ways Forgotten Realms: The Next Generation - fairly good on its own, but not really the same as the old-school stuff.</p><p></p><p>As to where to play... perhaps the Dalelands/Moonsea area? The Dales make a great base for expeditions to both the Moonsea and to the mysteries of Cormanthor. Cormyr is a rather classical feudal-ish kingdom, constrasted to the primarily city-state dominated rest of northwest Faerûn. The cities of the Dragon Coast and the Vast make great bases for intrigue and/or mercantile-focused campaigns. The North is great if you want more wilderness stuff, using either the 2e North boxed set or the 3e Silver Marches book (Silver Marches covers a slightly smaller area as it avoids the coastal bits). I personally feel that FR works best when the campaign is based somewhere in the Heartlands or the North, with more exotic places being, well, exotic. Having a Rashemi witch and her berserker companion traveling to the Sword Coast for one reason or another is much cooler and more interesting than placing a campaign in Rashemen (unless Rashemen is your thing, of course).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 6578209, member: 907"] I would actually suggest the 2e setting box (particularly if you can find it used at a decent price). The 3e book will have lots and lots of stuff that's useless to you - about a fourth to a third of the book consists of mechanics (feats, spells, prestige classes, stats for NPCs), whereas the 2e box is almost statless. This leaves a lot more room for actual setting fluff. Also, you get more maps with the 2e box (2x 30 miles-per-inch for the Heartlands and 2x 90 miles-per-inch for a larger overview, compared to a single 120 miles-per-inch map for 3e). Also, 3e treated most regions equally when it came to detail, whereas 2e focused a lot on the Heartlands. That can be a good or a bad thing, depending on whether you want to play in the Heartlands or not - 2e has more info on Cormyr and the Dalelands, whereas 3e has more info on, say, Aglarond or Calimshan. The 3e book was great for its era, and tried really hard to bring out the setting "fluff" through the "crunch" - for example, Amn is known for its mercantile culture, so people from Amn can take the Silver Palm feat giving bonuses to Appraise and Bluff. But 5e doesn't have that kind of "high-resolution" mechanics, so a lot of those rules are wasted unless you're actually running 3e (and many of them were revised for 3.5e in Player's Guide to Faerûn as well). I would not suggest buying the 4e book, as they warped the setting a [B]lot[/B] for 4th edition (including things like moving the timeline up a hundred years), to the extent where it's pretty much a different setting with many of the place names being the same. 4th ed Forgotten Realms is in many ways Forgotten Realms: The Next Generation - fairly good on its own, but not really the same as the old-school stuff. As to where to play... perhaps the Dalelands/Moonsea area? The Dales make a great base for expeditions to both the Moonsea and to the mysteries of Cormanthor. Cormyr is a rather classical feudal-ish kingdom, constrasted to the primarily city-state dominated rest of northwest Faerûn. The cities of the Dragon Coast and the Vast make great bases for intrigue and/or mercantile-focused campaigns. The North is great if you want more wilderness stuff, using either the 2e North boxed set or the 3e Silver Marches book (Silver Marches covers a slightly smaller area as it avoids the coastal bits). I personally feel that FR works best when the campaign is based somewhere in the Heartlands or the North, with more exotic places being, well, exotic. Having a Rashemi witch and her berserker companion traveling to the Sword Coast for one reason or another is much cooler and more interesting than placing a campaign in Rashemen (unless Rashemen is your thing, of course). [/QUOTE]
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