Swordsage said:
"Mediocre hack and slash DM"? You obviously have absolutely no idea about the way Ed Greenwood runs a game do you? His games are quintessential ROLEplaying: combat, dice - heck, even rules - are secondary to plot, performance and story.
First, you are completely right. I've never set at his table, and so I don't know.
However, in my defense I wrote that Ed Greenwood probably ran a might fine table, and your response only confirms that. As I said, you can tell from his stories that he runs a mighty enjoyable game. However, running a mighty fine table and producing a mighty fine role playing product are two completely different things.
What 2E adventures have Ed's moniker on them were HEAVILY edited by TSR (and the most cited examples - the Avatar Trilogy he did only because TSR said "If you don't do them, we'll get someone else to do them." - think of it as an attempt at damage control) and didn't in any real way show his talents as a writer or designer.
If Mr. Greenwood is the victim of the suits at TSR then I highly sympathize with him. If in fact 'The Huanted Halls of Evenstar' were as he produced them a fine peice of dungeon craft and setting building, and only after some hack editor got a hold of it was it turned into a mess (and not just a mess far and away the worst RPG product I ever bought) then I completely sympathize with him. But the fact is, as you've pointed out, the only way I know Ed Greenwood is through the products with his name on them and I frankly would have been ashamed for that product to have my name on it.
Ed beats them all for creativity and inventiveness...
Now that I'm afraid will have to remain a matter of opinion.
Waiting now for the inevitable anti-FR and Ed Greenwood diatribes about 'munchkinism', Chosen of GodX and abuse of game power levels: all aspects of FR that were instigated and introduced to the setting by TSR/WotC, NOT Ed Greenwood.
All I know of the FR is the products I bought and read. If he so lost complete creative control over his product that it ended up completely different than his desires - and somehow I think that that is something of an exaggeration - then that at the least says something about his ability as a game writer. But actually, while munchkinist fluff is a serious complaint in and of itself, those charges would not be foremost in my mind if I were to launch into a diatribe. Whatever crunch was added to the setting, even if every bit of crunch was added by TSR, FR remains a fundamentally flawed setting at a level below the crunch. It always struck me as one of those brilliantly realized bottom-up campaign worlds designed basically to serve the needs of the campaign he was running as they arose and with very little in the way of planning. While such a thing is a worthy accomplishment for a DM, a campaign world that is that strictly bottom up is going to lack alot in terms of creativity, cohesivenes and depth. FR is superficial in its cosmology. FR is superficial in its cultural settings, since basically every culture in the forgotten realms is no more than Earth. FR land masses and climates are no more logically arranged than Mystra, and the old X1 map was the first thing I thought of when I saw FR's map. Every climate is arranged for conveince of the DM, not to convey any sense of realism. It all works at some level because it is convienent for a DM, and because as Mearls pointed out it really understands the default story of a D&D game. At one level, it is a great place to go and kill things and take thier stuff. It has lots of things to kill and lots of stuff to take.
Mr. Greenwood is extremely prolific (an underrated trait) and probably a fun guy, but as a rulesmith, as a setting designer, and as a dungeon designer he's merely mediocre. As DM, I'll happily accept your word that he's one of the top in the business.
