Well I'm using it because the maps already drawn & has been on my shelf for years & years....
And that Encyclopedia Britannica detail? It's a tool. If I don't feel like making up all the details of place x I'll just google it then pick & choose.
Fair enough. And that's the difference. You HAVE that tool (I presume). You bought the books and have the option of using that material if you like. I never did. Outside of a couple of FR books back in 2e, I never bought any FR stuff. It wasn't for me.
So, for me, as someone who has never really bought into FR, what does using FR offer to me that any other setting doesn't? Like I said, if I'm going to only use a tiny sliver of the FR material out there, why would I bother using FR? Why not use any other setting, where, instead of ignoring 99% of the published material for that setting, I can
use 99% of it?
That's why I am using Primeval Thule. Could I run a campaign like this in FR? Oh quite probably. Chult would work quite well for what I'm doing. I'm quite sure there are other regions of FR that would also fit in a pinch. That's why they can add in pretty much any module from any setting into FR - the setting is so big that you can find a place for anything.
Fair enough. And for those who have a grounding in the setting, that's a huge bonus. But, for me, it doesn't offer me anything that another setting doesn't, and, comes with all this other stuff that I have no interest in, don't want to use, and just confuses the issue.
I'll give you an example. In Thule, there are no planes. Demons, and various other extra planar critters are now called Extraterrean (sp) and are considered to come from other planets. There's also a very large element of Cthulhu Mythos in the setting. Additionally, clerics in Thule are considered, more or less, just a wizard with better organizational skills. Being a priest of a Lawful Good (or Chaotic Evil) god does not dictate your behavior. Once you are a cleric, that's it. You don't "pray" for your spells from any god. They just come, just like a wizard. Which means that clerics are no longer constrained by their class to behave a certain way. ((And, it tends to mean that all clerics are far more like cults and not in a good way
))
This is something I can't do in Forgotten Realms. Not without ejecting pretty much everything to do with the gods in the setting. So, even though I could run my "Jungle exploration" style campaign in Chult, it would still be a Forgotten Realms campaign, complete with the setting assumptions of that setting.
IOW, if I'm going to strip out 99% of the lore of the setting, why would I use that setting? Why not use a setting that better suits what I want?
