Why Was Maztica So Weak?

[Gentlegamer]

Celebrim: you just described a campaign setting that sounds awesome!

I bet a similar thing could have been done with a sub-Sahara Africa setting (borrow from legends and pulps, have lost Atlantean cities, etc).

 

[William Ronald]

Celebrim: you just described a campaign setting that sounds awesome!

I bet a similar thing could have been done with a sub-Sahara Africa setting (borrow from legends and pulps, have lost Atlantean cities, etc).

I think that you might like Nyambe -- African Adventures by Atlas Games. It is a fantasy treatment of Africa, much like Green Ronin's Hamunaptra is for Ancient Egypt. I like having products that can draw on real world cultures for inspiration -- but can have a few tweaks in them. Indeed, the presence of magic alone would cause changes in any culture.

Celebrim, an excellent post.

 

[Faraer]

Ed doesn't use Earth analogues in his world design; in the late 80s and 90s TSR wanted (to quote him) 'to make the Realms a welcome setting for all sorts of play (Wanna be a gladiator? A samurai? A pirate? A jungle explorer?) because the Realms was then intended to be THE host world for 2nd Edition AD&D'. The subsettings that were bolted on to the Realms, from Douglas Niles's Moonshae Isles to Maztica, are based on very different design principles. Luckily, Wizards doesn't use the Realms so much as a dumping ground now, and if you want to concentrate on the original core Realms, it's not hard to ignore the bits duct-taped on at the edges.

But we'll never see Ed's original Moonshaes in print, or his Anchorome, because of TSR's abuse of the setting in this respect.

I like Al-Qadim, but I don't think it adds anything to the Realms or gains anything by being there; and I've yet to hear a solid argument that Kara-Tur or any of them do.

Obviously, part of the problem with Earth analogues is that they're almost inevitably far less interesting than the real thing.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Maztica may have had its weaknesses, and it certainly didn't fit into second ed, but I'm very glad to have it and to own a copy.

The setting was conceptually pretty interesting, with a much stronger mythology than is usual for the realms, and it had the beginings of a fantastic story for how it integrated with the rest of the Toril, which most of the other sub-settings lacked.

I think with third ed mechanics you could do a much much better job of putting together something like Maztica and I wish they had or would.

Bottom line I think we need a stone age DnD setting and something like Maztica lets you cover the whole range of such settings in a single product, plus it had cool Meso-Americanness.

 

[BlackMoria]

Celebrim fundamentally hit the nail on the head. I will add a comment of my own....

To many Realms fans, Maztica was a atrocity and was resented because it basically a real world analog (Cortez and the Aztecs historical era) that changed some names and had the Forgotten Realms brand name slapped on it. Ed would say that some areas were 'certain similarities' to certain real world areas and cultures, to help the imagery of architecture and dress, etc.. TSR seems to have misinterpreted and would make an area 'exactly' like the area....example - Mulhorand = Eygpt, not Mulhorand has certain cultural and architectural similarities to Eygpt. With Maztica, TSR went too far with the real world analogy.

Most true blue Realms fans hated it and wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole.

And most of the non-Realms gamers wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole because it had the Forgotten Realms brand name on it. (Why is it that people either hate the Realms or love it....is it because the middle ground folk are quiet compared to the extremes? Or is it because the setting either developed a 'love it or hate it' perspective.

In short, it failed for the reasons that Celebrim indicated and the fact that a number of Realms people hated it and wouldn't buy it and the Non-Realms fans wouldn't buy it because...well, it had the FR label on it.

 

[Faraer]

And most of the non-Realms gamers wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole because it had the Forgotten Realms brand name on it. (Why is it that people either hate the Realms or love it....is it because the middle ground folk are quiet compared to the extremes? Or is it because the setting either developed a 'love it or hate it' perspective.

Because they're quiet. I don't believe for a second that any significant number of people 'hate' the Realms.

 

[William Ronald]

Celebrim fundamentally hit the nail on the head. I will add a comment of my own....

To many Realms fans, Maztica was a atrocity and was resented because it basically a real world analog (Cortez and the Aztecs historical era) that changed some names and had the Forgotten Realms brand name slapped on it. Ed would say that some areas were 'certain similarities' to certain real world areas and cultures, to help the imagery of architecture and dress, etc.. TSR seems to have misinterpreted and would make an area 'exactly' like the area....example - Mulhorand = Eygpt, not Mulhorand has certain cultural and architectural similarities to Eygpt. With Maztica, TSR went too far with the real world analogy.

Most true blue Realms fans hated it and wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole.

And most of the non-Realms gamers wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole because it had the Forgotten Realms brand name on it. (Why is it that people either hate the Realms or love it....is it because the middle ground folk are quiet compared to the extremes? Or is it because the setting either developed a 'love it or hate it' perspective.

In short, it failed for the reasons that Celebrim indicated and the fact that a number of Realms people hated it and wouldn't buy it and the Non-Realms fans wouldn't buy it because...well, it had the FR label on it.

Perhaps the best advice for using real world sources for inspiration is to not make EVERYTHING exactly the same, but to have parallels. The Realms also have some other examples of areas that have some similarity to the real world. Calimshan and Zakhara are both similar to the world of the Arabian Nights stories in general ways -- but have many important differences. Rasheman, for example, has a sort of Russian feel, while Mulhorand and Unther have similarities to parts of the ancient Near East. (Nonhumans, such as elves and dwarves, along with magic help to add to the differences.)

Perhaps the Forgotten Realms generates such divide because of some of the actions of TSR in the 1980s and 1990s. It seemed that EVERYTHING for D&D at times seemed to be tied into the realms, even with the FR take on avatars appearing in Legends and Lore (as I recall.) There seemed to be very little support for people running homebrew campaigns. Plus FR also had to deal with the Greyhawk fans upset over how their favorite setting was handled. There also was a sense of an increase in the power level of the Realms to Greyhawk. Additionally, even the current FR designers admit that PCs in the realms oftened seem to take a back seat to such movers and shakers as Elminster and the Chosen of Mystra.

Perhaps Maztica might have succeeded if it had more of the differences that Celebrim suggested. If you use the real world for inspiration, think of how magic, deities, sentient nonhumans, and other factors might influence the develoipment of a culture.

 

[William Ronald]

Because they're quiet. I don't believe for a second that any significant number of people 'hate' the Realms.

I think you tend to hear the voices for and against a setting because of a number of people who like certain aspects of the Realms while disliking other aspects. I think that ultimately a campaign setting is what each individual DM and the players make of it.

 

[Nellisir]

Because they're quiet. I don't believe for a second that any significant number of people 'hate' the Realms.

Ditto. I buy the setting stuff, just not the extra fluff, like Champions of Ruin. I don't run a FR campaign, but that's because I've always been 100% homebrew,

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Von Ether]

I think you tend to hear the voices for and against a setting because of a number of people who like certain aspects of the Realms while disliking other aspects. I think that ultimately a campaign setting is what each individual DM and the players make of it.

For the record, I don't hate the Realms. I strongly dislike the many players who deputize themselves into the Realm police.

I usually only use a published setting when it offers something beyond your standard DnD settings (FR and GH). If I want standard fantasy, I can whip that up myself in no time and perfer to keep my players in the dark on the politics and people until it the proper time.