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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 1788369" data-attributes="member: 14159">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).</blockquote>

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