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

[Sunderstone]

Ive owned just about all the material of the setting at one point or another, but I think I prefer 3rd edition.
There may not be as many regional supplements as prior editions YET, but I like the new regional HC books more. Coupled with Prestige Classes and books like Frostburn and the Draconomicon, it takes a life of it's own for myself and my group.
As far as creative limitations imposed on a DM due to certain movers and shakers aroound (elminster, driz'zt etc), I also disagree there. I simply dont have them or have altered them to an extent. For example, Driz'zt has vanished in Icewind Dale, and and there are rumors of an old and powerful reclusive wizard around the Shadowdale area though no one has seen him.
Powerful leaders like the Simbul and Alustriel are a little harder to hide, but so far I have the Simbul in a mysterious catatonic, meditative state and her subordinates cannot seem to rouse her. Powerful and Evil NPCs are so much easier due to the fact that their plots often keep them at odds with eachother anyway or some may want certain catastrophes to happen so they might seize opportunities.

However, I do think these insanely powerful NPCs are a large headache to DMs who want to be able to craft epic adventures, after all why bother if the party gets defeated, they can relax knowing that Elminster would never let any harm come to the Dalelands. It may take some altering to Realms lore and history but in the long run its worth it.

Just my opinions...

 

[Turjan]

My answer would be that MY forgotten realms are my favourite version.

These days I only use the 3e FR main book, which brought me back to FR after almost a decade of disgust with that setting.

Sure, that's the way I do it with most settings, anyway. It's always fun to mix and match .

No offense, but this is kind of ludacris.

A DM can and should feel free to custom tailor whatever aspect of a setting he or she wishes. Just because something is spelled out in the book doesn't mean a DM can't change or add to it.

Don't worry, I'm not offended. This was just a quote of a statement often heard in FR-bashing posts, not my opinion. I completely agree with your notion.


If I summarize the results so far, both, the old Grey Box and the newest 3e incarnation seem to have the most followers, as they both represent different poles of the scale: the first one being an imaginative campaign setting that still leaves a lot to the DM's and the players' imagination (unfortunately, I don't know this one), the second one being a fully rounded product with easy to use 3E stats (I like it very much myself). Only the 2E product seems not to have too many friends.

 

[kuje31]

Guess I'm going to be the odd one then and say I prefer the 1e and 2e material over the 3e material. As many have said about 3e, even for FR, it's just missing that "something" that existed in the old material. Well Silver Marches and Serpent Kingdoms and parts of the FRCS have that "something" but the rest of the 3e books? They just sit in my FR box collecting dust while the older material gets used all the time.

Oh and I'll go with what was said before also. My version is the one I prefer.

 

[DragonLancer]

I liked the old 1st ed Grey box set. I was thinking yesturday of digging it out.

 

[MaxKaladin]

When I look back at the previous editions, I'd say I like the Grey Box version best. It had just the right amount of mystery and wonder in it without going over the top with either. It seemed to open up new vistas of possibility to me at 17/18 when it came out and I'm really fond of it. The 2e sets were good, but the Realms seems to have gotten increasingly cosmopolitan over the course of 2e and into 3e, which I don't really care for that much.

 

[seankreynolds]

I don't particularly care for 3.x's well-intentioned but inelegant need to pigeon-hole everything.
For example - used to be that you could simply have someone (an NPC, for example) just "be" a Purple Dragon Knight. With 3.x, now he has to take levels in a prestige class...

Not true. The prestige class description even says, "It is not necessary to have this prestige class to serve in the Purple Dragons at large.... It is not necessary to have this prestige class to be an officer of the Purple Dragons...."

{The Shadovar reappearing.}

That's more a push by the novels division than anything RPG R&D decided, and thus isn't really a 3E issue (other than it first appeared in a 3E FR gamebook rather than a 2E one).

{The "Tree Cosmology." }

You are of course entitled to your opinion about the FRCS cosmology, but understand that it was never Ed's intent that FR be crammed into the Great Wheel cosmology, and the author of the Manual of the Planes (both Manuals, actually) agrees that a non-Wheel cosmology is appropriate for FR. See here:

http://p082.ezboard.com/fseankreynoldsboardsfrm20.showMessage?topicID=2.topic

{The disappearance of many areas from the map or from any mention (Erlkazar, Maztica, Kara-Tur, Zakhara, The Bandit Wastes, Swagdar, The Blade Kingdoms, etc.)}

Part of that is due to the scale of the map: some things ended up so small on the map (when we went from the giant poster maps we could include in the old box sets to the smaller poster map glued into the FRCS) that we ended up removing them for clarity ... either the text would overlap or be too small to be readable. They're still there (and we added some of those things back in in the larger four-part poster map we published in Dragon in the following months).
As for Zakhara, Maztica, and other large areas that don't get "any mention," you should look at the map on page 231 of the FRCS, the Maztica Zakhara entries on page 230, and note that the FRCS index says that Zakhara is mentioned on seven other pages and Maztica is mentioned on ten other pages.
The FRCS' focus in on Faerun, as all of our information from customers shows that nearly all of them play in Faerun rather than any other part of Toril. Devoting five pages to Zakhara or Maztica -- and entire continent -- would give them poor coverage, wouldn't be enough info to run a game there, and would take away space that could be used to focus on Faerun. Remember that the authors over-wrote the FRCS by a total of 100 pages; we had to cut a lot to make it all fit, and when it came to making a choice to keep or cut something, if it wasn't directly useful to a Faerun campaign, it usually got cut.

{The dungeon-punk-ization of demi-humans.}

I have no idea what you mean by this.

{The emphasis on crunch vs. fluff in the various publications (we'll never see another "Volo's Guide to..." or "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog" get published.)}

That is unfortunate, and I think it's clear I'm not happy with the situation. However, I do feel they have a reasonable compromise with the current setup. Would I like to see more story material? Yes. Do I understand that most players and DMs are demanding more "crunch"? Yes.

 

[Turjan]

{The emphasis on crunch vs. fluff in the various publications (we'll never see another "Volo's Guide to..." or "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog" get published.)}

That is unfortunate, and I think it's clear I'm not happy with the situation. However, I do feel they have a reasonable compromise with the current setup. Would I like to see more story material? Yes. Do I understand that most players and DMs are demanding more "crunch"? Yes.

Interesting . "Silver Marches" is a great book. Did it reach the set sales goal? I'm not that sure about it, if I look at the "Unapproachable East"...

 

[blindrage]

I perfer the 3.0/3.5 version of FR because it puts the emphasis back on the players. And cleans up alot of issuses I had with the power level in FR. And do not get me started on the problems I had with the 2.0/2.5 clerics in FR. GRRR that was a headache that for the most part went away with 3.0/3.5 cleric domians and PrCs.

 

[wingsandsword]

{The "Tree Cosmology." }

You are of course entitled to your opinion about the FRCS cosmology, but understand that it was never Ed's intent that FR be crammed into the Great Wheel cosmology, and the author of the Manual of the Planes (both Manuals, actually) agrees that a non-Wheel cosmology is appropriate for FR. See here:

I think the reason so many people object to the Great Wheel (do a search for a poll I did about the Great Wheel and the realms a while back, I'd put up a link to it but I don't have a CS account so I can't search) is that it's such a radical change of an integral part of the setting. Planar adventuring has always been a traditional high-level pastime, and the Realms are a fairly high-level and high-power setting, so it's always seemed natural that any long-running Realms game would have plenty of planar adventures, and remapping the cosmology would be a little like switching Cormyr and Sembia on the map of Faerun, the game might still be playable, but people would notice and it wouldn't feel the same.

When the 3e FRCS came out and I showed it to my gaming group, who had been playing a Realms/Planescape game for going on 4 years at that point, looking at the "Great Tree" cosmology just about broke the entire table out into laughter, and that planar map quickly got relegated to the status of "Clueless Prime Berk" info about the planes.

I generally like the 3e Realms stuff, in fact I think (except for the planar bit) the 3e FRCS is one of the best books ever made for D&D (and the best setting sourcebook, I could really run the realms with just that if I had to.) However, the cosmology was always an integral part of my Realms games (playing and DM'ing, planar stuff was always big with our group), so completely shuffling around the layout got the attention of everybody, and was promptly house-ruled away to prevent massive confusion/upheaval in our ongoing game.

Now, personally I was a fan of the 2e multiverse model. I like the idea that Oerth, Krynn, Toril, Aebrynis and theoretically Athas are all out there, Ravenloft is a demiplane, and Spelljammer and Planescape knit it all together. I like it for the same reason I like the realms, depth. More breadth, more detail, more "what's out there. . ." makes it feel all the more real to me. It's one reason I don't like the "generic" Greyhawk of 3e, it feels like an old 8-bit console RPG where you get a paragraph of background/flavor text about the world and go about a nondescript fantasy land beating up nondescript monsters while visiting nameless towns. If I want my own homebrew world, I'll make it from scratch, not fill in the blanks of an existing world.

And I also mourn the loss of heavy-flavor (i.e. "fluff") books, Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog is one of only a tiny number of 2e books I still use at every game (The Faiths & Avatars trilogy is the others, the only "Crunch" 2e books I still use are the Spell Compendiums, which I mine for ideas), and I honestly think a reprint of AWRC with the only change being 3.x edition game stats would sell like hotcakes and have been a lot better than the 3e Arms & Equipment Guide (but as you said, the Bean Counters don't quite think like us, maybe one day a d20 publisher will make a similar really nice fantasy equipment catalog, it wouldn't have all the realms-specific touches, but it would be nice anyway, we can only hope).

 

[Turjan]

When the 3e FRCS came out and I showed it to my gaming group, who had been playing a Realms/Planescape game for going on 4 years at that point, looking at the "Great Tree" cosmology just about broke the entire table out into laughter, and that planar map quickly got relegated to the status of "Clueless Prime Berk" info about the planes.

Hehe . One problem with the tree model is that nearly all traffic between outer planes has to go via Toril. I know of all these heroes protecting portals in the Realms, but somehow this doesn't go well with me. I like to have one plane in between, or a different solution.

Now, personally I was a fan of the 2e multiverse model. I like the idea that Oerth, Krynn, Toril, Aebrynis and theoretically Athas are all out there, Ravenloft is a demiplane, and Spelljammer and Planescape knit it all together. I like it for the same reason I like the realms, depth. More breadth, more detail, more "what's out there. . ." makes it feel all the more real to me. It's one reason I don't like the "generic" Greyhawk of 3e, it feels like an old 8-bit console RPG where you get a paragraph of background/flavor text about the world and go about a nondescript fantasy land beating up nondescript monsters while visiting nameless towns. If I want my own homebrew world, I'll make it from scratch, not fill in the blanks of an existing world.

I'm not sure whether more options is always less generic. Sometimes, it's the opposite, because it wants to be an one-fits-all. Anyway, generic fantasy seems to be the big seller. Otherwise, we would still have Dark Sun and less d20 supplements.

And I also mourn the loss of heavy-flavor (i.e. "fluff") books, Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog is one of only a tiny number of 2e books I still use at every game (The Faiths & Avatars trilogy is the others, the only "Crunch" 2e books I still use are the Spell Compendiums, which I mine for ideas), and I honestly think a reprint of AWRC with the only change being 3.x edition game stats would sell like hotcakes and have been a lot better than the 3e Arms & Equipment Guide (but as you said, the Bean Counters don't quite think like us, maybe one day a d20 publisher will make a similar really nice fantasy equipment catalog, it wouldn't have all the realms-specific touches, but it would be nice anyway, we can only hope).

As I said, I'd really like to know how the "Silver Marches" experiment went. Does such a concept sell? To me, yes, but I'm not too sure as far as the majority of people are concerned. I read much too often that people felt "betrayed" because they did not get enough crunch for their money. Maybe it's the age of the "Bean Counters", who knows ?