Why *Dont* you like Forgotten Realms?

[WayneLigon]

I don't really DISlike it very much, but I've never been moved to run a game set there for three main reasons, two of which are probably nonsensical

1. The crazy-quilt geography gives me the eye-twitch. Countries, ethnic groups are spattered over the land with no discernible pattern. Mountain 'ranges' start and stop with wild abandon, ditto for forests, swamps, and pretty much every other geographical feature save for hot, sandy deserts.

2. The 'FR style' city maps give me the eye-twitch. Their buildings never touch each other, etc.

3. The level of detail isn't a turn-off - it's always easier to ignore detail than to try and fill it in later - but the details of the details are sometimes just... eh. So many people have worked on the thing for so many years that it could use for a good, hard steam-cleaning to purge it of silly ideas and tighten up the theme and focus of the entire thing.

 

[pawsplay]

FR is too new school for me. I was raised on Mystara ("the Known World") and Greyhawk.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Because it's hackneyed, cliched, unfocused, unconvincing, and boring too. Oh, and most of the NPCs are hideously awful.

But I had fun, twisting the 3e FRCS to my evil DM purposes. Goes to show: you can use any setting, if you want to, and make it work.

 

[Bluenose]

1. Geography. I just got sick of how stupid it all is. Every desert is a result of a magical catastrophe; presumably because magical catastrophes permanently alter the climate in an area.

2. Economics. Trade in particular, with no apparent understanding of how medieval technology affects the ability to transport goods around. Waterdeep is a prime example.

3. Religion. 'The' Pantheon. Gods grouped by function instead of culture. Both superfluous deities, and deities that are too all-encompassing.

4. Some of the fans. The ones who insist if you make any criticism, "You don't understand how it works!" Actually, if I don't understand I tend to ask; if I criticise, you might do the courtesy of assuming I know something about the subject in question.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If I was going to try and make something out of the realms, I'd go for an evil campaign.

Totally agree, that's the way to go. The forces of good in FR are very powerful and very annoying.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Because it's a Canadian hippy nudie free love commune where the leader is a 26th level naked Gandalf and his hawt elven girlfriend is a 30th level wizard.

NPCs are too high level, powerful and get too much authorial love. Too much wizard love, too much elf love. Conan would not prosper here. The place is too wussy.

It doesn't have the Norse doom-laden vibe (by way of Moorcock and 2000AD) of Warhammer, or Glorantha's mythological literacy or Eberron's pulpitude and noir edge, or Birthright's medievalism.

There's no good ideas, no quality there, just mass detail overload. It's sub-sub-Tolkienesque vanilla fantasy and that's it. It's like Sword of Shannara or those utterly crappy D&D novels.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I started with the 3e FR book, and that's all I have. Perhaps surprisingly many of the reasons already stated for hating the Realms are things I don't have a problem with:

* I prefer my worlds' geography, cultures, and trade put together so they make no sense logically. Logic turns off my imagination.

* I like there to be powerful forces for Good. I automatically believe Evil things will always win, so I need extra weight on the Good side of the scale.

Thing is as much as FR is what I like it's not fantastic enough. In all its detail it still felt like a normal world full of normal people. It, like so many other settings, is holding itself back. That's why I'm ultimately not interested in it.

 

[Stoat]

Two things I haven't seen yet.

1. Fantasy name syndrome. Everybody's got a name full of X's and Z's and apostrophes.

2. Unnecessary "Fantasy". I remember a Dragon article from the 3.X days that said something like, "The river is full of Zurraunt fish, which are like trout." Pro tip: If it's like trout, call it trout. Don't make up some unpronouncable stupid name.

 

[Glade Riven]

- When I first started role-playing, it seemed like every freakin' 5' square was already mapped out.
- Walking into a used book store and seeing the Wall of Forgotten Realms...and all of the books are not game material.
- Dealing with someone who's read all those books on the Wall of Forgotten Realms at the game table is painful. I had a somewhat similar experience when running a Star Wars campaign with someone who had read too much of the Expanded Universe. It drains the fun out of it and causes huge metagaming issues.
- That emo bastard Drizt and his fanclub
- The DM having to hot-fix why the super-NPCs aren't available to fix all your problems

Beyond that, I just don't find it a very compelling campaign setting. It's dull. Boring. Cliche. I've read a few books off the Wall of FR, and while mildly entertained it's mediocre fantasy pretending it's high fantasy.

 

[Aegeri]

I like Forgotten Realms as a "kitchen sink" setting, but numerous things about it even after the spellplague bother me no end.

1) I still hate the NPCs. Although they have been depowered, generally removed and such from the setting they still have huge amounts of plot armor. I'm also worried about novel canon adding back into the setting things I absolutely hated that were removed by the spellplague. Like resurrecting Mystra or repowering said NPCs.

2) I don't like that the gods in FR are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops and morons. Worse they get featured in novels prominently.

3) While the obsessive detail level has gone down a lot, it hasn't focused detail on things that are important. Like major cities having maps and other useful game aids. Older edition maps of BG would be useful, if the place wasn't just completely gigantic now and so would look majorly different.

4) The map for the FRCG is by far the worst of the maps for the campaign settings in 4E.

There are other reasons as well, but those are the main ones for me. Also, I find that I just prefer PoL now for my "Kitchen sink" setting. I can copiously steal good ideas from FR to my hearts content as well, like different gods and similar. It's got to the point now that I view it as a setting for stealing things from, like the upcoming Neverwinter setting and not for actually playing in.