Would you like Maddman's Forgotten Realms?

[maddman75]

I'm not much of a D&Der these days, though I do have one idea for a campaign with the right group. The REAL forgotten realms.

I'd need players that were at least somewhat familiar with the Realms to make it work. The PCs start in some rural location, the Dales maybe. Anything they know from sourcebooks, novels, books, or any other source is available as in-character information. These are the stories and legends that they grew up with. However, that doesn't mean they're right.

In fact, this Realms is a gritty, low power world. Elminster exists, as a low level sage and scholar. He never mated with goddess or any of that other nonsense. The Gods didn't walk the earth. Drizzt Do'Urden was a drow mercenary the ten-towns hired to put down a goblin uprising who was killed in the battle. Breunor Battlehammer died looking for Mithral Hall 300 years ago. Myth Drannor turned to dust a century ago. Many nations appearing on the 'map' no longer exist.

The real Realms is a harsh place where people scrape to get by and heroes are few and far between, and live lives that are nasty, brutish, and short.

Does this sound fun at all, or would it merely antagonize those that like the Realms as-is? And what other bits of Realms lore would be changed? What few bits would actually be right?

 

[Dimitri Mazieres]

I would find it very interesting to try. Even more so if, as a player, I had any kind of "common knowledge" regarding the Realms. Imagine the surprise when you arrive to the mighty City of Splendors, Waterdeep, only to find that it is a corrupt, filth-filled, backstabbing port city, and the wise Lords of Waterdeep are a puppet council of push-overs manipulated by a nefarious "the-end-justifies-the-means" Khelben.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Yeah, I like the sound of it - as long as the "false" level includes the bad guys as well as the good guys..

 

[vagabundo]

The key, as with any "alternate history", is exposing the differences so that the players can explore them.

I've often thought of re-imaging the realms into something like this...

 

[keterys]

Sounds fun. I'd be careful calling it the 'REAL' forgotten realms, of course, but I love the idea of how stories get inflated and morphed and then you find out the reality. Sounds very good.

 

[Wystan]

I would love to try this.

 

[Umbran]

Does this sound fun at all, or would it merely antagonize those that like the Realms as-is?

From long observation, a sort of point on marketing: The continued assertion that this is "the real Realms", such that the original is somehow fake, is apt to be taken as antagonistic. You should play in the world you like, but I'd avoid beating others over the head with the assertion that yours is real and theirs isn't. Especially when the other has several decades of development on you, and yours is objectively the derivative work. Kind of like many people didn't like 3e being bashed as part of marketing 4e - same basic dynamic. Don't bash that upon which you r success will be based. Treat it lovingly.

After that - if all you really want is a place where adventuring life is brutish, nasty, and short, you don't need to do an alternate Realms. As has already been stated, the point to alternate history is to specifically explore the point or points that make it different - exploring the cascade of social, political, and strategic logic from the point of divergence. Remove too many of the familiar elements, and you lose much of your ability to do that. If you go too far, what you have is a setting that shares nothing with the Realms other than a few tacked on names.

 

[Barastrondo]

After that - if all you really want is a place where adventuring life is brutish, nasty, and short, you don't need to do an alternate Realms. As has already been stated, the point to alternate history is to specifically explore the point or points that make it different - exploring the cascade of social, political, and strategic logic from the point of divergence. Remove too many of the familiar elements, and you lose much of your ability to do that. If you go too far, what you have is a setting that shares nothing with the Realms other than a few tacked on names.

I would sort of agree, but as someone who likes Lewis Carroll, I can't help but point out that there are a lot of takes on the Alice books out there that share little in common with the actual spirit of the books yet like to play with all the trappings, and are still referred to as "Alice" or "Wonderland" in some way. That's what this reminds me of: an alternate take on the setting (especially a grittier one). It's not really an alternate history with a historical point of diversion as a "same setting premise, mythical themes dialed back down."

Take Troy as compared to the Iliad, or the sliding scale of actual Chinese history to Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Dynasty Warriors, or Beowulf as turned into The 13th Warrior. Many of the same stories would still be there, they'd just be told differently. If all you wanted was a setting that was nasty and brutish, then yeah, there's not much point in reskinning the Realms; but if you want a setting that's nasty and brutish and plays with those familiar trappings at the same time, seems as viable as the lastest "modern reimagining of Alice in Wonderland."

I think the premise could be interesting, but I think for it to really sing, it would need some elements of positivity to counteract all the negative elements. For instance, if (let's say) Alias is around, but is simply a lowish-level female fighter with no real fancy backstory, it would be much more interesting if the down-to-earth Alias was herself an interesting person. Sort of like how the founding fathers of the USA were historically rather more flawed than we like to pretend, but they were still really interesting people. If Icewind Dale is now more Deadwood than it was before, there should be elements about it that make the players want to hang out there and get involved. Tearing things down is easy; but if you rip up all the fancy carpets, it's nice to find a hardwood floor underneath.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Wow. I love this idea. I wish I'd thought of it for my own Forgotten Realms game (I guess I still could, but heading into Paragon after having played for over a year seems a poor time to introduce the concept).

What I love about it is that it is a fresh spin on a setting that has reams and reams of lore already written about it that both A) liberates the DM and B) allows for players to know that information without harming the game. I love that it plays with the players' expectations, and I love that it creates a sort of "lore" within the world that is the result of mortal fallacies.

One of the interesting themes Robert Jordan plays with sometimes in the Wheel of Time novels is that, over time, the truth is twisted with every retelling of the story, such that, a thousand years from now, the story might not really even resemble the true series of events. "The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again." I like that this idea plays with that same concept, that what we know as truth depends largely on who told it to us. It's an especially salient idea in the context of medieval fantasy; whereas in modern times we can verify facts thanks to technology, a medieval fantasy world still relieve heavily on human (and other mortal) perceptions and retellings.

I love the idea of players being these guys from a backwoods village whose view of the world is shaped by, effectively, tall tales and legends about the world around them. They may be disillusioned when they meet great heroes who, as it turns out, are just regular people, but they will also find that the actions of regular people can echo through the annals of history.

The whole idea that life is nasty, brutish, and short doesn't have as much appeal to me (mostly because I've already got Dark Sun for that setting), but the idea of a low-magic version of the Realms does appeal to me. I'd love this idea for an all-Martial party game in the Forgotten Realms, which basically then brings the rest of the setting down a notch in terms of magic so it matches the party, instead of the party matching the world.

Very cool. Now I'm going to be thinking about this all day.

 

[Desdichado]

After that - if all you really want is a place where adventuring life is brutish, nasty, and short, you don't need to do an alternate Realms. As has already been stated, the point to alternate history is to specifically explore the point or points that make it different - exploring the cascade of social, political, and strategic logic from the point of divergence. Remove too many of the familiar elements, and you lose much of your ability to do that. If you go too far, what you have is a setting that shares nothing with the Realms other than a few tacked on names.

I think you're totally missing the point. The ways in which this differs from standard as-presented Realms is it's main selling point, not it's problem. That's the whole reason to do it in the first place.

I'd play it in a heartbeat, Madmann. You ever run this as a Pbp, let me know.