Why Do You Like the Forgotten Realms?

[Bluenose]

1. There's a breadth to the setting that isn't there in most campaign worlds.

2. If a GM can't read a book about the setting and find something that makes them think of a plot hook, they aren't trying.

3. Artistically it's very stylish, with a lot of my favourite artwork.

4. Zakhara, the Moonshaes, and the underwater civilisations of the sea of Fallen Stars are places I really like.

And please, just because people have gone in the 'Why I hate FR' thread to defend it, that isn't a reason to reciprocate.

 

[Swedish Chef]

Guilty of defending the Realms in the "dislike" thread.

I just thoroughly enjoy the rich history and diversity of the setting. I love the fluff in the various splat books, as I feel I can read them for fun and not just to look up Rule X. To me, that sort of detail makes the Realms unique.

And at the same time, that level of detail is not stifling. Sure, Waterdeep has been extensively detailed over several supplements. If the players visit, we've got a wealth of information available for us to use. If they visit a different city, we make up what we need. With the sheer amount of major and minor cities and towns that have never been detailed, I can start a campaign in any one of them and not worry about some player arguing "canon" with me over who actually runs which tavern on what street. Mind you, I've got a great group. None of the players actually argue canon with me. Occasionally one may mention some event they read about. If it works for us for the campaign, we go with it. If it doesn't, it is ignored. So even with all the detail that many seem to dislike, we find that there is far more that is not detailed that we can play with.

But, what I think I prize *most* about the Realms are all my signed copies of the books. Ed Greenwood is a great guy! I'm lucky to live relatively near to him, as well as having met him at various local cons over the years.

 

[Herschel]

Because it's cool, big, diverse, keeps developing and when it gets too bloated they blow it up.

 

[Alzrius]

I really enjoyed the sheer plethora of development that the campaign setting received - that you could dig into the details in a scholarly fashion was, I always thought, a very nice change of pace; there's a lot of campaign settings that take a hands-off approach to world-building - something that went the other way was nice for the people who want a high level of details.

 

[Philosopher]

The thing I love the most about the Realms is all of the various power groups and organizations that the PCs can encounter/fight/join/etc. Sometimes it's taken a little too far for my tastes (keeping track of everyone's machinations in Greenwood's novels can be dizzying at times), but the basic concept is golden. Rather than just being the good guys fighting against some bad guy and his minions, you can have a whole network of good guys and bad guys. If the PCs want to go it on their own, they can do so (and I'd consider playing down influence of the Harpers, say, if that's what the players want). But if the PCs are part of an organization, they can have support, which allows them to tackle larger scale missions, almost like working for the CIA or some such thing.

While I've never actually DMed in the Realms, the various power groups have had a strong influence on my homebrew.

 

[Celebrim]

This is almost going to be funny.

My ill regard of the setting is a matter of public record and doesn't need comment here except to reference anyone to the other thread if they are interested. The irony here is that my list of reasons for liking the setting is almost an exact copy of the list the many of people in the other thread had for disliking it.

1) It's extremely detailed and there is a large amount of published resources available on the setting. Basic and important chores like a calendar, broad sweep of history, city maps, political systems and so forth are largely done. Peices of the system can be cut out and pasted into other settings or settings inspired by but not adhering to the cannon at will, and you can safely discard large amounts of the setting while still having something useful to work with if only the richly detailed city maps and long lists of NPC names and short descriptions.
2) It doesn't have any single one clear schtick. One thing that really annoys me in fantasy and sci-fi is when a whole world or entire race is given a culture which represents only a fraction of the culture and variaty found in our own world. You end up with whole races supposedly spanning entire star systems with a mono-culture roughly equivalent to (for example) extremely simplified, sterotypical, 16th century Japan. Or you end up with whole worlds that are 'The Desert Planet' or 'The Ice Planet', as if it was realistic that the full range of climates and geological zones on a planet would be equivalent to the range found in only the Sahara Desert or Antartica of the real world. A fantasy world with a single schtick strikes me as a decent place to set a novel, but not a particularly great place to set any thing more than a single adventure path. IMO, you do _a_ campaign of Dragon Lance, or _a_ campaign of Dark Sun. It's not a place you would want to continually revist because its a country or small continent masquerading as a whole world. Give me worlds that look like someone threw the kitchen sink at them because the real world looks like that.
3) It's got ambition. As badly executed as many of those ambitions might be and as bland and unconvincing as they may be on execution, I love that the FR's think big. I love for example that there is a desert wasteland which the product of magic, not climate, that god slaying is a regular feature of the world and there are actual divine kings. As long as you are doing big fantasy, in my opinion, go big. The potential is there. There is an honest if failing attempt at bringing the 'oh wow' factor, and I think there is alot to learn from its ambition. I loath the FR, but I'll freely admit that it informed my style quite abit because it made me question whether small ambitions had to go hand in hand with grit, mud, and versimilitude. Granted, FR didn't bring the grid, mud, and versimilitude but it did make me question my former small scale assumptions realize that you could go big and still be 'grim and gritty'. Ed's work was so extremely different than what I thought then was the 'one true way', that it shocked me and made me question my basic assumptions about what was realistic. Now, when people ask me if I do 'high fantasy' or 'grim and gritty', I say 'both' because I recognized that many of the assumptions on both ends were false and the two weren't as incompatible as I thought.

 

[ferratus]

1) Mythals and Myth Drannor.

2) The Dales and Moonsea region in 1e Gray box set.

3) Cormyr, its absolute monarch, and the war wizards. The fact that it is a shining kingdom of renfair fantasy on the surface, and a creepy police state underneath, always pleased me.

 

[TarionzCousin]

BTW, I hate two letters of the alphabet. Am I gonna get smacked?

Sure! I can be accommodating.
D4H

TC




Am I the first person to mention the module "Hellgate Keep"? That was very innovative and cool, IMHO.

 

[Dausuul]

I like the name. Very evocative. I also like the sense of history to the world; the ancient empires and the lost kingdoms, the shadow of the past reaching into the present. At its best, the Realms can produce a great feeling of awe and antiquity, and that's something I really love.

 

[Banshee16]

One of the things I both like and dislike is the "swing" you get in character motivations etc. For instance, elves aren't necessarily all good tree huggers, unlike the core assumptions. You've got ones that are nasty, arrogant, politically motivated and power hungry....and you have your tree huggers, and various other combinations.

One thing I *didn'* like in the past was that, at least in the novels, the evil power groups were kind of like keystone cops. I think they really tried to fix that in 3E.

I don't play 4E realms (or 4E), but I've flipped through the book, and there are *elements* that I think are cool inspirations, and that I've thought of integrating into my own game. For instance, I think the idea of the nation of Sarifal is pretty cool. Sucks for the Moonshaes, but that area has been ignored for years. And I'm currently reading through Tad Williams' Shadowmarch series, which details the "end of the world", as it is overrun by a resurgent faerie folk army......and I've been wanting to find a way to integrate Bastion Press' book "Faeries" into the game, so I'll likely take the inspiration of Sarifal from 4E realms, replace the Eladrin with Feorin (Faerie nobles) and Faerie from the lands of Between, and have a dark invasion of inhuman faerie displacing the humans, and getting revenge for having been overrun millenia ago.

Mulhorand. Incarnate Kings. Minions of Set. Check. I love all those ideas. Very cool section of the realms.

The Harpers as an organization of do-gooders that really aren't. I mean, I don't think they're evil.....but they don't always do "the right thing" either. They're kind of some weird mishmash of spy service, diplomatic force, balancing neutrality, elements of communism, and some other things. I think if the Realms were dominated and controlled by the Harpers, it might be a stable place, but not necessarily pleasant to live in.

Lots of other interesting groups like the Twisted Rune, Daemonfey, and the Shades.

I like that the population levels seem more accurate than most other settings. IMO, in many other campaigns, populations have been set unnecessarily low...to the point that they might not be able to support the technological and financial development necessary to support the setting itself.

By no means are the FR perfect. But I think they're a pretty decent vanilla setting. The novels, like many D&D novels, vary. I like some of Salvatore's novels, as well as several of Elaine Cunningham's and Ed Greenwoods. Many of the others I don't care for as much. I do appreciate interesting characters like Arilyn Moonblade, Finder Wyvernspur, and Drizzt.

I've never been one to have the Chosen show up in game. But I can say that I appreciate that in the realms, there are other powerful characters. It only makes sense, given the population levels involved, and I find it's far less tempting for the players to think that they can take over the kingdom since they're higher level than the kind. "Let's just kill him and take his throne.". That's not always possible when the court wizard is lvl 18. It's always given a more realistic feel to the world.

Banshee

Banshee