Which version of the FR do you prefer, and why?

[Nisarg]

Player's Guide to Faerun. Why it's in a player's guide... I don't know, but it is out there.

And I completely agree with Sean. About the biggest problem I have with the new cosmology is all the ret-connecting that has to be done. Aside from that, each campaign world should have it's own cosmology. Trying to pigeon-hole it into the Great Wheel destroys some of the feel of the setting.

Jamming Midnight or Eberron into the Great Wheel cosmology would absolutely destroy the settings for me.

In the Player's guide, there's something like 20 pages, hardly comparable to what you get in MoTP.

I'm not saying every setting should have to use the great Wheel cosmology.. I am saying that the Great Wheel cosmology should belong to at least one setting that WoTC honestly supports, and that one setting should be its main one (which at least for now is still FR, unless and until Eberron takes off).

Really the frustrating thing is that they used Greyhawk as the basis of MoTP, and a few other things (like the deities in the PHB), while everyone knew that FR was is and will be their real "flagship" setting.

I would have been just as happy if they'd made MoTP about the "big tree" cosmology; either way, my real point is that MoTP and FR should have been compatible, otherwise what's the point of having the MoTP?

Nisarg

 

[teitan]

While the 3e version is the most beautiful (graphic design wise) and complete campaign setting I have seen for 3.x, my favorite is still the first edition.

Filled with the unknown. Fraught with danger. Not Magick psycho....

The first edition still hearkens to me. But the third edition is just too much.

Strange dichotomy, eh?

Razuur

Interesting, I always thought that the 3e version restored some of the luster and mystery that the OGB originally possessed, it isn't so over the top as the 2e materials that came out. The FRCS seems to be as magically understated as the OGB.

Jason

 

[dreaded_beast]

I would have been just as happy if they'd made MoTP about the "big tree" cosmology; either way, my real point is that MoTP and FR should have been compatible, otherwise what's the point of having the MoTP?

For the people who game in other campaign worlds other than FR, but want some rules for using the planes.

Not everyone who bought the FRCS bought the MoTP and vice-versa.

While I agree with you that it would have been nice if the two were more compatible, I don't think that it was the intention of making those 2 products dependent upon one another. I believe that both products were meant to stand-alone within their respective settings.

IMO, it's like saying why isn't Ebberon material more compatible with the FRCS.

 

[Pants]

In the Player's guide, there's something like 20 pages, hardly comparable to what you get in MoTP.

I'm not saying every setting should have to use the great Wheel cosmology.. I am saying that the Great Wheel cosmology should belong to at least one setting that WoTC honestly supports, and that one setting should be its main one (which at least for now is still FR, unless and until Eberron takes off).

Really the frustrating thing is that they used Greyhawk as the basis of MoTP, and a few other things (like the deities in the PHB), while everyone knew that FR was is and will be their real "flagship" setting.

I would have been just as happy if they'd made MoTP about the "big tree" cosmology; either way, my real point is that MoTP and FR should have been compatible, otherwise what's the point of having the MoTP?

Nisarg

Well... the MotP was more about 'building your own cosmology and here's our example of how it can be done... the Great Wheel!'

 

[ruleslawyer]

Right. It's like saying that F&P isn't compatible with Deities and Demigods.

As for me: Having run an FR game for 17 (count 'em) years, and used FR material from Dragon before that, I prefer the 3e ruleset, but do like the 1e box and its descendants for flavor. Guess I subscribe to the Necromancer Games people's tagline...

I use a gamut of sources from all editions, although I've noticed that the stuff by authors other than Ed, Steve Schend, or Eric Boyd tends not to blow my whistle, so that cuts out a huge amount of the 2e stuff, some of the 1e stuff, and basically all the novels (I'm not even very fond of Ed's, though the short stories aren't bad). My personal FR favorites:

-The gray box
-Waterdeep and the North/City of Splendors
-The Volo's Guides
-Dreams of the Red Wizards
-The Magister/Pages from the Mages/Prayers from the Faithful
-Dwarves Deep
-FR13 Anauroch
-The "Everwinking Eye" columns in Polyhedron
-The 2e "gods books" (Faiths & Avatars, etc.)
-Ruins of Undermountain/Ruins of Myth Drannor
-Drow of the Underdark
-Drizzt's Guide to the Underdark
-Code of the Harpers
-Secrets of the Magister
-Empires of the Shining Sea
-Serpent Kingdoms
-Silver Marches
-Halls of the High King (while an adventure, it contains SCADS of Realmslore)

Those are the ones that see regular use in play for me. I would argue that a game based on those (and FRCS, PGtF, Magic of Faerun, and Lords of Darkness, if those are your bag) would be rich in hooks and ideas and tone while not filling in every single element of the setting beyond the capacity to make the Realms your own. IMHO, it's when you use every single region book and weird expansion (some written way out of tone with the original Realms; check out the Netheril boxed set f'rex) that the setting spirals out of control.

Incidentally, I happen to like (or at least have mixed feelings about) the Great Tree; I want my FR games to be FR games, not (Planescape/)FR games. The Planescape materials are high quality, and I have run a very successful PS game, but I believe that a campaign needs to have, as part of its sense of place, the idea of being central, not peripheral. IMHO, a "myriad worlds" cosmology would work best for the Realms, with the Tree representing the most commonly-accessible planes and other worlds connecting with Toril via gates through a transitive plane (but, of course, the Plane of Shadow handles this anyway). It sounds much more like Ed's original vision.

 

[Turjan]

Hmm... I really don't know why there is such a big fuzz about the cosmology. I'm no big fan of the Great Wheel, because I find it too symmetric in its urge to squeeze the whole neatly sliced alignment system into drawers. In this regard, I prefer the new FR cosmology, although it does not mean that I use it as written.

On the other hand, I really like the Manual of the Planes; it's one of my favourite D&D books, and I don't see it devaluated by any of the other publications. Not even the descriptions of the planes are really lost, because they can be recycled for other places in my own cosmology. I like to mix and match, and I prefer "my otherworlds" to be in a flow, anyway. If a player states that the place I just describe should be Hades and that that particular stone, according to the book, should lie five feet further to the left, it's his problem and not mine . This means, I can use both printed cosmologies together, without much headache.


As far as my original question is concerned, it still seems to be a near perfect 50:50 split between the old original grey box and the 3E campaign setting. That's a very interesting result .

 

[Turjan]

As for me: Having run an FR game for 17 (count 'em) years, and used FR material from Dragon before that, I prefer the 3e ruleset, but do like the 1e box and its descendants for flavor. Guess I subscribe to the Necromancer Games people's tagline...

I use a gamut of sources from all editions, although I've noticed that the stuff by authors other than Ed, Steve Schend, or Eric Boyd tends not to blow my whistle, so that cuts out a huge amount of the 2e stuff, some of the 1e stuff, and basically all the novels (I'm not even very fond of Ed's, though the short stories aren't bad).

Thanks a lot for your list of favourites . As I see, you also like to mix and match. I think the approach to take the FR as a big department store where you just pick whatever you like and fits your bill, is a quite reasonable one. If working down your list takes 17 years, embracing the whole FR material must take more than a lifetime, anyway .

 

[seankreynolds]

Strange, then, that he wrote about the Forgotten Realms cosmology as being part of the Great Wheel way back in early issues of Dragon - long before FR was was even a twinkle in TSR managers' eyes.While I don't purport to know what's inside Ed Greenwood's head, I look upon your statement with heavy skepticism.

I don't have that article handy ... you sure he wasn't talking about adjusting a campaign to fit the core cosmology? Also understand that the original FR had Moorcock entities that had to be changed for copyright reasons when it was actually published (the elemental lord Straasha, a creation of Moorcock, was changed to Istishia, for example).

While that's a noble concept and all, you still end up with a fairly pissed off fanbase as a result of this action.
Why? Because, you release the Manual of the Planes, which is hailed as a really great book, and then end up making both of your real supported settings for D&D (FR & Eberron) COMPLETELY INCOMPATIBLE with the Manual of the Planes.

You weren't paying enough attention to the MotP, then. One, the MotP is a guidebook for creating your own planar cosmology, and includes a sample cosmology (the Great Wheel) just as the PH/DMG/MM and splatbooks include a sample game world (Greyhawk), which makes sense as the Great Wheel is the cosmology for Greyhawk. But the MotP also says you don't have to stick to that cosmology. And it even shows a diagram of the FRCS cosmology on the page where it talks about moving between cosmologies. To the MotP, the FRCS cosmology is completely valid. Jeff Grubb and I talked quite a bit about the FRCS cosmology while he was writing that book, in fact.

See the problem there? Its the "D&D Manual of the Planes", and yet both of the settings Wizards actually gives a crap about (the old elvis and the new elvis, let's call them) use totally different cosmologies... meaning that the MoTP is useless if you're playing in FR

Now now, is it really _useless_? You can't use the MotP info to come up with your own planar descriptions for the FR planes?

and that if you really want to use the cool stuff in MoTP you have to set your game in Greyhawk, a setting that has had about as much support and popularity as the Natural Law Party.

Don't get me started on not supporting Greyhawk, I was Mr. Greyhawk for a long time....

To top it off, looking at it from the pov of the FR fan, you're telling the FR fan, "Yeah we know there's this great big sourcebook on the planes, but instead, because we feel its "inappropriate", we're going to make you use the two-and-a-half page description of the special FR planes instead... oh you already spent money on the MoTP? Sorry, too bad.."

Well, the MotP came out after the FRCS (August 2001), so your last comment doesn't apply to the people who bought the FRCS in April 2001 (i.e., months before they "wasted" their money on the MotP).

That, plus the fact that they haven't actually come out with a book on the FR planes (unless I missed it), would be enough to piss me and a number of other FR players off.

See the Player's Guide to Faerun, it gives planar features to all of the FRCS cosmology planes.

Of course, I just say the hell with it and use the great wheel anyways. So all that the FR "great tree" accomplishes is that it unnescesarily complicates my gaming, because any of the scant material on the planes that does show up in the FR books I have to go and convert to fit the cosmology in MoTP.

Lemme ask you this ... how often does planar travel come up in your FR game? Because in most games it doesn't come up at all. Thus, the FRCS cosmology is about as invalid as the ELH for a campaign that doesn't use epic-level rules, or the Psi Handbook for a game that doesn't use psionics. If it does come up a lot, feel free to use whatever resource you want for your planar stuff. If you prefer the Wheel, fine. No skin off my back. It doesn't mean that the Wheel wasn't designed for FR and FR was shoehorned to fit into the Great Wheel and doing so causes a lot of strange problems with the location of gods.

Finally, one thing to remember: WotC assumes that for an FR campaign, the only books you have are the PH, DMG, MM, and FRCS. They don't assume you have any other books. They don't require you to use any other books. Any other books you buy is your privilidge and responsibility to use in your campaign. If you complain that the MotP uses the Great Wheel, then you should complain that the splatbooks and core books refer to Greyhawk gods, organizations, and locations, all of which are "useless" if you are running an FR campaign.

And I put "useless" in quotes because it's not hard to say, "this prestige class of Pelor is now for Lathander," just as it's easy to say "The MotP Nine Hells are just like the FRCS Nine Hells," and so on. In other words, if you're running a campaign you should be willing and able to put a minimum amount of work necessary into making non-required materials fit the campaign). And it's not like a lot of that work isn't already done for you--didn't they have a Sage Advice about this (where Skip gave his estimations of MotP-style planar traits for FRCS planes) shortly after MotP went on sale and long before Player's Guide to Faerun?

 

[seankreynolds]

Nice double post there, Sean.

 

[seankreynolds]

TRIPLE POST, yeah!!!