Why is Forgotten Realms your least favorite setting?

[Randolpho]

Ok, so we have a Dragonlance least favorite setting thread

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17706

but Forgotten Realms won as the least favored setting on these boards:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17480

(even though Dragonlance and Spelljammer was hot on the Realms' heels)

So I figured, for balance's sake alone, we should have a poll asking why we hate Forgotten Realms.

So spill your guts, folks.

[edit: edited for typos]

 

[laiyna]

If you would destroy all pockets ever written for FR, and this includes all "special" characters with them, you would have a bit desent setting left.

But a good start would be building a wall about 10 feet high and about 35 feet wide. Here you put the 7 sisters, Elminister and the Symbul against it and execute them...... Ater that mystra will come down to save her "hero's" so she is just nicely in time to be shot to (the wall is empty by that time).

Laiyna

 

[novyet]

Because it's the only setting groups near me use, and I'm burned out on it. It's not a bad setting overall, I'm just really really sick of it.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Strip it back down to the setting it was at the beginning. I liked the first boxed set.

 

[Psion]

But Dragonlance is my least favorite setting!

That said, there are things I don't like about the realms.

Foremost, is that the Realms has "idea-kleptomania". It's sickening. The realms has a lot of great ideas -- all thrown together in one big mixing pot. But somehow the Realms ends up being the "official home" of ideas that originally came for elsewhere.

This started a long time ago when, for example, Kara-Tur somehow got pulled into the Realms.

3e brought it on full bore when Portals, Genasi, and Shades (for example) all became official realms staples. Of course, that just leaves us not so realmsish fans following Realms supplements around in order to get the gouge on our favorite creatures. It doesn't help when FR adds realmsian slants on everything, like making Abishai irrelevant to the fiendish heirarchy.

Also, somehow the demihuman deities other than the pantheon leaders -- originally a Greyhawk/Gygaxian creation -- were swallowed up totally by the realms, and written out of the "generic" deities list.

The mishmash makes it hard for me to consider playing in the realms, and the "realms ownership" bit is chiding to those of us who don't play in the realms.

Another aspect I don't like is the NPCs overshadowing the players.

That said I don't hate the realms. I would play in the realms before lots of settings. But that is what bugs me about it.

 

[Leopold]

it's a lazy mans setting..everything is already done and drawn up for a dm to just pick up the book and go at it..nothing left to be done here, some plot hooks, bad guys, etc. but heck why bother when all the major NPC's can walkthrough everything and mop up, the pc's are just left overs making a name for themselves while hiding in the shadow of elminster, khelban, drizzt, manshoon, etc..

give me a stripped down book with crunchy info, some setting details, and background data and a few major NPCs but leave the rest up to me...

TMI..

 

[SpikeyFreak]

Randy - you could have spelled his name right.

Sheesh.

--Playa Hate-a Spikey

 

[Randolpho]

Who, Drizzle? Oops... my bad.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Psion,

You forgot Thar. It used to be an oD&D orc country in Mystara.

While I don't so much like the patchwork nature of the Realms, it does have advantages. A DM can drop in whatever he wants, wherever he wants. For instance, home-brew "conversions" for putting the Temple of Elemental Evil in the FR tend to be about two paragraphs long. An entire frickin' temple dedicated to evil spirits from the inner planes! Two paragraphs!

In my opinion, that is both a strength and a weakness.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

If I were a DM, I guess I'd appreciate the portability factor. But as a player, I have to say the Realms come off as silly. They've tried to squeeze every little bit of fantasy from hundreds of different sources into this one place. Some of it just doesn't go together, and so the seams show.