D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[Maxperson]

Don't be silly....the Greyhawk NPC that trapped NINE gods wasn't Mordenkainen, it was Zagyg.

The existence of other powerful wizards doesn't come close to negating what I'm saying. After all, Elminster is at least 2nd down on the arcane caster totem pole in the Realms, maybe farther down than that. Since your response doesn't affect my position at all, what was your point?

 

[reelo]

Just chiming in to say that I quite like the Realms. That's not to say I wouldn't like to visit GH some day, but the Realms are something that have grown naturally for me, starting with the grey box (which I got even before fully grasping what D&D really is, simply because I *wanted* to know what RPGs are all about) and then the wonderful Bioware games set in the Sword Coast. I've read the first couple of Drizzt novels, but they seemed kinda bland to me, so I didn't pursue.
My love (and knowledge) of the Realms is quite limited, however: I really like the Sword Coast, from the Spine of the World down to the borders of Amn, and from the coast in the west to Anauroch in the east. I don't care much for places beyond that, like Calimshan, Chult, Halruaa, Rashemen, Thay, even Cormyr or the likes. The Sword Coast and the North are suitably "generic fantasy" and also large enough to provide ample room for adventure, but also detailed enough to find all the info I need (and also ignore the info I don't need)

Had I been born 5-10 earlier, I might well have become a GH grognard. But fate has it that I fell in love with the Baldur's Gate series and the Icewind Dale series, and so I settled for the Sword Coast. And big names like Drizzt, Elminster and Alustriel are just that: people you've heard of, not people you run into every 3 sessions.

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[Arnwolf666]

There sales says quite the opposite.

 

[Seramus]

No, he flat out told me I had run them wrong in my own game. Following it up with "it's OK, you were right to run them the wrong way".

I also used funny emjois and a flamboyant writing style to make it absolutely clear that my tone was funny, sassy, and lighthearted. I can see you didn't take it that way. So how can I make it clear to you in the future?

 

[hawkeyefan]

The existence of other powerful wizards doesn't come close to negating what I'm saying. After all, Elminster is at least 2nd down on the arcane caster totem pole in the Realms, maybe farther down than that. Since your response doesn't affect my position at all, what was your point?

I was agreeing with you by showing that there are indeed NPCs in Greyhawk who mingle with the gods, just that it wasn't the NPC in question.

Sorry that wasn't clearer.

 

[Shasarak]

In real life, from archaeologists who leave town when the Nazis or rebels with AK-47s show up. Or, in many cases, die or get taken hostage. Very few real-life archaeologists have any skill in jumping onto a moving tank, unlike Indiana Jones. I'm not saying that there are no adventuring NPCs, but that NPCs can gain levels without adventuring, and that adventuring, on the whole, is fairly rare.

Yes, so the 0 level archaeologists that cant jump from tanks or fight nazis get killed off or captured and then rescued by the people of higher level that can do those things. The ability to stay at home and google everything you need is a very recent invention compared to the old fashioned having to go out and get it done yourself way of the past.

PCs worship gods, not NPCs. A number of adventuring clerics probably do look down upon the priests (leveled or not) that spend their time bringing solace and comfort to the flock, but if you are really concerned about it, the PC should probably worship a god that encourages adventuring clerics, like a god of war. Of course, the local priest of peace and love may not be thrilled about raising your cleric of war, but that's your problem.

You dont actually really communicate directly with Gods (unless you, you know, do) so the most obvious one to tell you what the God wants is his ranking cleric. And frankly if that guy is lazing around preaching peace and love then it is probably going to be him that needs the raising . Lucky that Adventuring Cleric is out leveling up.

 

[Shasarak]

As I said, I don't remember much. I just looked up an adventure I ran (Endless Armies; from 2e's Maztica so this Realms relevant! ) out of curiosity. This looks vaguely familiar:

Priests (Delian, Elkhound, and Wadsworth): Int Average; AL LN; AC 4; MV 12; HD 2; hp 12; THAC0 20; #AT 1; Damage 1-6 + 1/ 1-6; SA & SD Spells as 2nd level priests; SZ M; ML 14

It's more than I use now. I kinda like the Int rating, but I wouldn't bother using it unless it was out of the ordinary on the NPC - there's no need to call out a wizard as having a high Int, for example.

Edit - so yeah, those are clearly clerics, and no doubt Burne's a wizard and Rufus a fighter, and all of them essentially do use the same rules as a PC, but they leave out so many things, too, even the basics like a Strength score. That's the sort of thing I was trying to say earlier.

I just thought that if you see the stats for a 2 HD Priest that cast spells as a 2nd level Priest that most likely those NPCs are going to be 2nd level Priests. I dont even know if there were rules for creating non-leveled NPCs in ADnD?

 

[Maxperson]

Written by @Prosfilaes

In real life, from archaeologists who leave town when the Nazis or rebels with AK-47s show up. Or, in many cases, die or get taken hostage. Very few real-life archaeologists have any skill in jumping onto a moving tank, unlike Indiana Jones. I'm not saying that there are no adventuring NPCs, but that NPCs can gain levels without adventuring, and that adventuring, on the whole, is fairly rare.

That's simply not true in D&D. In D&D since 1e, adventuring is not rare at all. From 1e to 3e NPC adventurers were all over the place. In 4e they were still all over the place, but the default was a different mechanic from the PC rules, though 4e still went out of its way to tell DMs that they could use the PC mechanics for NPCs if they wanted to, the game just wasn't balanced for it. 5e has gone back towards the earlier editions, and NPC adventurers are still around.

You can play the game as if NPC adventurers are rare, but that's your homebrew.

 

[MackMcMacky]

If you're talking about Waterdeep (and forgive me if you're not), then yes coups and attempted coups have happened in the past. We know of at least two (Kerrigan the Arcanist, and during the Guildwars), and it wouldn't be surprising if there were more that haven't become common knowledge. That's why the position of Open Lord was instituted, as a check against such thing.

(Good list of historians by the way, although I disagree with Renfrew on the Anatolian Hypothesis, which I don't think fits the archaeological and especially linguistic evidence very well. Hittite and other Anatolian languages are too derived from PIE to be the ancestors to the rest, especially in regards to the laryngeals)


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A recent computer model indicates Renfrew was almost right. What was throwing him off is that the Anatolian wave of advance was a second wave after the initial Caucasian wave for PIE.

The deeper problem with secret governments and the potential for secret coups, which apparently have happened, is that people would rationally lose confidence in their ability to trust that their leaders are their leaders. One known leader isn't much insurance especially when all a coup has to do is eliminate the one known leader as well and just claim to be the secret leaders who all feel so sad that the known leaders was killed by dastardly villains.

I just don't see citizens buying into the arrangement.

 

[MackMcMacky]

Fair enough. I'd say that pretty much applies to most settings....don't you? Like I said...are the differences between Oerth, Mystara, Golarion, and the Realms really that different? Can't the Scarlet Brotherhood be moved over to the Realms with ease? Can't the Circle of Eight or Castle Greyhawk?

Then there's always the question of what a DM does with the source material. Maybe one DM can take a bog standard fantasy trope and do somethib really cool with it for his game, while another may need all the coolness baked in without any ability to add his own.

Sure, Chult seems like many other jungle settings. So do Xen'drik, the Amedio Jungle, the Mwangi Expanse...and so on. And likely the jungles of 98% of home brewed worlds. I mean...it's a jungle, how unique are they? One's got dinosaurs and the other's got drow and the other has Aztecs....and all could be shuffled among their various home settings with little disruption to the rest of it.

As for the trade routes and roads...it seems an odd reason to dismiss a setting, to me, but okay. I don't know if I've ever looked at a fantasy setting map and thought to myself "now there are some verisimilitudinous trade routes, by George", but to each his own.



Don't be silly....the Greyhawk NPC that trapped NINE gods wasn't Mordenkainen, it was Zagyg.

The Scarlet Brotherhood would probably be your strongest point. Funny, I have never used them. Castle Greyhawk is an adventure. The Circle of 8 is a group of archmages, none of which are sleeping with gods or who rule major city-states or nations... and their goal is essentially to maintain "balance" which appears to mean they are very selective in what they intervene in. Tenser the Archmage seems to be the most active. He is used as the hook to run into the Isle of the Ape and is central to the "plot" of a late 2nd edition adventure that appears to be trying to clean up after a really dumb idea involving Rary and Robilar pulling a FRealmsian move on the Circle of 8. In Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, he and his henchmen are offered as Pre-Gens to play through the adventure. You don't have to use them but they still serve as a good guide for how capable PCs ought to be for the adventure. (That's why I like Pre-Gens. I don't use them for players. I use them to get a sense of what the designers think can handle the adventure.)

Your other remarks are just picking up bits and pieces of what I said that really make more sense in the context of the post. The trade route, for example, is one of the things FRealms gets wrong-ish in world-building along with strange political systems.