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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davelozzi" data-source="post: 7129538" data-attributes="member: 771">I've been lurking on this thread but haven't bothered commenting yet since it got so big so fast, and because it is such a hotly contested topic, but it seems like the Realms needed a little love so I will finally throw in my two coppers.  I've been a FR fan since the early days, on and off.  I loved the old gray box and most of the original run of FR_ sourcebooks, especially FR5 Savage Frontier and the Tethyr part of FR3 Empires of the Sands.  I had a FR campaign that I ran for probably about 6-7 years through junior high and high school that was by far my most memorable campaign.  It never really ended in an official sense but just went on a mostly permanent hiatus when we all went off to college (where I ran another FR campaign).   We did play through the Time of Troubles in that campaign (not the actual adventure trilogy, just our own stuff against the ToT backdrop), though in later years I had a low opinion of the ToT and wished we had left it out of our version of the Realms.As the 2e era wore on, I thought that the bloat started to kick in as more and more of the products were just uninspired rehashes of earlier products (though some were decent, like the City of Splendors boxed set, which was a nice expansion over the earlier FR1 Waterdeep and the North, and some were excellent like Faiths & Avatars).  Late 2e had some pretty good stuff, in particular I enjoyed the attention to detail and background in products by Stephen E. Schend like Lands of Intrigue and Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves, though his writing style was perhaps a bit bland.  As a kid, I enjoyed a lot of the early novels, but as the years wore on and I got older, I thought they went way, way down hill (or maybe my tastes just matured, whatever).  I specifically remember reading some book where Elminster was basically bathing in a pile of magic items in Myth Drannor or something and I just thought it was so ridiculous I couldn't read another FR novel ever.By the time 3e came out, I was pretty much over the Realms.  I did think that the FRCS was a pretty solid campaign setting reference, however, even if I was annoyed by the changes to the maps and some of they storylines like the return of Netheril (interestingly because that original FR campaign I ran was a party who was dedicated to uncovering secrets of lost Netheril and had it continued I probably would have had a back in time element a la Arcane Age, which was released later).  I picked up 4-5 3e Realms products but played in a homebrew in these years, then ran a larger setting agnostic Red Hand of Doom campaign.  Everything  read about the direction of 4e as a game turned me off so I went to went to Pathfinder as ruleset and Golarion as a campaign world and completely missed the 4e Realms.  I was running Rise of the Runelords until my kids came along and I didn't have time so the game petered out halfway through the AP.  From here I had a seven year hiatus from gaming all together, and just recently got brought back into the fold when my nephews picked up the 5e D&D Starter Set and needed my help to show them the ropes.  Since then, I've gotten back into D&D and the Realms both, and I have to say that I think the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is one of the best versions of the Realms I have seen in years.  I know it gets no love, and that it lacks a lot in the way of details, but I really think that in terms of a setting to play in, they have reset it in all the right ways, and it is probably the version of the setting most suited the kind of campaign I want to run since the old gray box in 1e.  The world has returned to a points of light setting, ripe for exploration and adventure, and players are finally squarely the focus again.  I am not sure why it seems like so few people appreciate this as it seems like what a lot of people ask for.  I guess those people, like many of you in this thread, have already written off the Realms, and I get that.That said, I detest the Spellplague and pretty much everything I read that happened during the 4e era and the 100 year time jump, and if I was running the current timeline Realms I would probably pretend all of that never happened and just play in the current year while conveniently ignoring the recent history.  I just started a Storm King's Thunder campaign and had a lot of trouble deciding whether or not I wanted to do just that (play in the current default timeline but play down the recent history), but ultimately decided that since a number of the players in this campaign overlap from my childhood and college FR games, I would rather feel like we were sort of picking up where we left off, so I am setting the game in 1368 FR, just about 7-10 years in game time later than my earlier campaigns ended.Whew, that was more long winded that I wanted it to be, I probably didn't need to recap the entire history of my relationship with the Realms.  In summary though, I will just say that the Realms has a lot to offer, and a lot of baggage as well, so I can totally see both sides of the issue, but short of doing a total reboot, I think that what WotC has done with the 5e Realms is about as good as they could have in terms of presenting a classic style setting for the the default style of D&D adventures.  If you have no interest in the Realms, yeah, don't bother, of course, but if you like the setting and have been turned off by some of the later incarnations of it, I think the current stuff is worth a look.  Your mileage may vary.</blockquote>

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