Post/Author/DateTime	Post
ShaDowJaX 06-21-06, 05:04 AM	I have played D&D for 15 years now. My favorite setting has always been the Realms and playing by the 2E rules which to me were alot simply to go by. When WoTC came out with the new stuff I stopped playing and just collected the game books and continue reading the novels. As I continued being kept up to date on changes I notice alot of stuff I didn't care to much for. For example: WoTC got rid of the Ravenloft , Planescape, Darksun, and Mystra settings. The last two setting I didn't care to much for anyway, but the Planescape setting was a blow and the changes to almost everything D&D was a mighty blow. Now I see debates about many things to is Lolth in Greyhawk and the Lolth in the Realms one in the same or are they different? The Planes have change where now the Realms has its own set of Planes while the Core D&D has its originals. That's just to name a few of the changes I have seen over the years. What do you think, do you like the new D&D stuff that has been put on the shelf?
Baptor 06-21-06, 05:07 AM	LOL My boy, its as if you doused the forums in gasoline and sat down to have a cigarette. But Ill tell ya what I think nonetheless. Im a veteran of 2nd and 3rd, and I tell ya, Im a big fan of the 3rd edition realms as presented in the FRCS. I was happy with MoF, SM, and LoD, but since those books most of whats been printed has been more of additions to make monies than actual realmslore. Thats my 2c.
GothicDan 06-21-06, 05:17 AM	I prefer a lot of 1E lore, but most (not all, such as the ToT) of the 2E editions. I like the very BASICS of the 3E system (BAB and saves), but otherwise prefer the 2E game design methodology. I like lots of lore, lots of roleplaying, and little emphasis on numbers of any kind.
ArnimThayer 06-22-06, 12:06 AM	I am a 15+ year veteran as well, having played D&d through 1st Edition to the modern 3.5 version. I have played the Realms since it's launch in with the "old grey box" in... was it 1987? I have just about every book, novel and box set collected in my office, much to the dismay of my wife. And I still run a regular FR game every Sunday at a local gaming store, with a the group consisting of both veteran gamers and interested newbies. I use the 3.5 rules, since my new players are most familiar with them and my veteran players are all RPGA members; it just gives us common ground to base our gaming. I think that 3rd Edition stiuff has a more consistant feel, with a stronger continuity overall. That said, I prefer playing our games in the time period before 1368-1374 DR, since I favor the area surrounding Cormyr, the Dalelands, Sembia, and the Moonsea. I like the idea of a strong noble king, and the tyrants of the North with the independent areas in between acting as a buffer. My players get to experience a lot of "Realms history", while still being the stars of the campaign. In the course of my campaigns, my players have served with Azoun in the Crusade, established a fortified town on the outskirts of the Hullack forest, promoted one of their own to nobility to help prevent a civil uprising, helped establish a dwarven freehold in the Thunder Peaks, found a lost dwarven city, and battled a Shadow Dracolich based there... twice. They have faced as enemies the Zhentarim, Wearers of Purple, the Eldreth Veluuthra, and now a renegade Red Wizard of Thay. I bring every 3rd Edition (and 3.5) book I have for most sessions, except (of course) the none relevant regional books. My players and I make frequent use of not just the FRCS, and MoF, but also Player's Guide to Faerun, Lords of Darkness, Champions of Ruin (I LOVE these two books!), Champions of Valor, Lost Empires of Faerun, and now Power of Faerun as well. I will admit though that I find myself utilizing a lot of 2nd Edition lore when setting up my games. It remains (in my opinion) the source of more fluff than can ever be used in a lifetime of gaming. Likewise, since I use 3.5 rules, I am always looking at the latest stuff to see if and how to incorporate it into my game. I look forward to adding the Knight class (from Player's Handbook II) beside the Marshal (Minatures Handbook) in my new campaign!
ClobberinTime 06-22-06, 02:25 PM	I've also played through all of the editions and have been playing since 1977, as far as the Mechanics go, 3.5 is the best edition yet, and I look forward to 4.0 when the introduce fully the concepts of swift and immediate actions and redo the spell system to account for the addition of those action types. I think then the game will hit its mechanical peak so to speak. As far as the lore, I like most of it, so I should probably state what I didn't like, Once FR became the core setting they tacked everything in in a senseless way and just overkilled the monsters. If you want to see some riduculous critters look at Ruins of Myth Drannor. On top of that the political map was static but the metaphysical map was all over the place. the Realms faced planar invasion and dying gods weakly, every new novel series invented a new set of bad guys that were physically different, i.e. some game designer sitting there saying, suppose we take the body of a giant Woodchuck and combine it with a Dragon and an ant, but plot wise had no distinction.... i.e. Phaenrims, Malungrym, Sharn, Deepspawn, etc... At the same time nothing really ever happened, the political boundaries were all set in stone, the iconic characters never died, and the planar invasion was always stopped before it got going! The new realms is geo-political, the battles are mainly battles between human groups vying for control of x or Y resource, and they are alot less afraid to change the political landscape of the realms at this point. Frankly I like this but I gotta go back to work now, :)
Petrankov 06-22-06, 04:08 PM	I like the 3.5 mechanics. I really only use 2ed material with a sprinkling of 3.0/3.5.
Ranger REG 06-22-06, 04:40 PM	What do you think, do you like the new D&D stuff that has been put on the shelf? In general D&D or just the Realms stuff?
Mr. Wilson 06-24-06, 05:59 AM	Quite frankly, I think the system is better now than it was during AD&D 2E, but I miss books like the Volo's Guides series, i.e. the more lore centric books. LEoF is probably my favorite book in 3.x because of the heavy lore.
MaskedOne 06-24-06, 09:43 AM	For the most part, I prefer 3.X mechanics. Lorewise, the best place to go is often 2E or older.
Mathas 06-24-06, 11:16 PM	I've been playing in the Realms and running campaigns thre for the past sixteen years..soon to be sventeen this August. I never played a first edition game in it, I started playing in it during second edition. Now with third edition...I like osme of the stuff they did for it, the map is pretty cool..although..I still my secnd edition campaign setting maps..you know..the four large maps...along with the distance chart that came with them. That map has went through modificatons of its own thanks to myself and those I've played with..we've pencilled in locations on it, x'd out locations that were umm..destroyed or transporeted to who knows where..so it's a map full of play history that I myself and those I game with do not want to give up.
Aaron L 06-25-06, 01:48 AM	I started playing 2E in '92, had a few friends who also played 1e, started playing with them and found that I vastly preferred 1E over 2E (the changes that existed between the two editions were minor, but the ones that were there seemed to me to do nothing but remove a good deal of flavor. The 2E magic resistance rules in particular I saw a a great dumbing down from 1E) What I really found lacking was the decision to strip out things such as demons and devils, assassins, and half orcs out of the game in a misguided attempt to appease fundies who had viewed D&D as a "satanic" game, an attemot that wasnt even noticed by the ones who complained because they had never read any of the books in the first place and went entirely on false rumors and outright lies. As for the Realsm specifically, the 1E grey box was just magnificent. The Realms presented there were just fun and wnderful. When 2E came out the Disneyfication of the Realms started in full swing, the Zhentarim became bumbling idiots, evil never won, and the Harpers had a friendly neighborhood superhero in every village across the north. Elminster became some sort of mascot charicature of a flawless do gooder instead of the crochety sage he was in the grey box (thats why people started hating him; I dont however. Just the way he was overused) I was driven away by the crap that the Realms became in 2E, only occasionally reading things of interest (Cormanthyr and the related elf books I loved dearly) When 3E came out with the FRCS, I was blown away. It made me love the Realms again. It took everything that had come before, tweaked it all to make some sort of sense, made a coherent continuity rather than the disjointed mess it had become in 2E, and added cultural and language information ala the old Greyhowk box. 3E has made the Realms greater than it ever was before. Far too many people complain about changes that in fact made the setting a much better, more coherent, more logical place.
Cthulhu 06-25-06, 07:48 PM	I'll start with the Forgotten Realms since this is the FR forum. 3rd edition FR is a tight and well thought out campaign world. Is it the best? I don't think its inherently better, theme or storywise, than earlier editions but its presented in a better format. At least when its supplements not buried in prestige classes, new feats, and the 47th variation of an orc or dragon. But that flaw is a part of the D&D's current game engine not the world itself. If it has any problems they are fairly minor in scope. Mystra and her Chosen's seeming omniprescence can be annoying but truthfully they are a small (very small) part of the setting and easily avoided. The disconnection of FR from the Great Wheel was the wrong choice. Mostly just nitpicks not worth talking about. 3.5 D&D (the ruleset) is a different beast. At its core it fulfills its promise of a simple consistent rule convention. A wide variety of d20 games prove that it can be the foundation of a simple and elegant system (Mutants & Masterminds or Castles & Crusaders for example). But D&D itself suffers from a glut of to many prestige classes, feats, and rules. Although the worst of the problems can be avoided with a careful selection of books.
JWSIII 06-27-06, 05:45 AM	Some of the really early first edition forgotten realms (the grey box stuff) was I think the best; but I think most of the 3/3.5 stuff is extremely good, and I like the general direction (although we will see on moonseas.... withholding final judgement till I can really sit down and read it, but very nervous so far). I prefered the wheel/realms cosmology, but other than that I think 3rd/3.5 and WotC have done alright by realms in general, especially when they jumped into the area sourcebooks (Unapproachable, Underdark, Serpent Kingdoms, Shining South, ect.) And I really disliked 2nd from a rules AND realmslore standpoint, 1st had that feeling of really having to work, and of mystery and power at high levels; 3rd has an ease of play that is refreshing.... and imo, 2nd got neither right - I see them as the three eras; the era of the original artists (gygax ect. all) with 1st, the era of the business (which, despite scoffers, has alot to be said for it) with 3rd, and the era of neither in between. Before, we got true storytelling and realmslore, now we get mass-market stuff that rarely hits true genius but very rarely isn't at least good either, and (I know I'm gonna get flamed) in second I felt we got alot of truly weird junk in which they did far more damage on strange tangents, hitting neither genius nor playability imo. And I liked alot of the individual IDEAS 2nd had (monster gods was a freakin' great stand alone supplement), but there was NO coherency, and ALOT of wild individual project stuff seemed to creep in. So for me the realms has been an inverted curve so to speak, starts awesome under Sir Ed, takes a downward tilt under 2nd, guides back up to highly enjoyable under 3/3.5. I am ultimately with Aaron L. above, I think that 3rd has put the incoherent mess that 2nd had made of the realms back together, and I thank WotC for it daily. note my sig. But, in a random rant, my one real complaint with WotC on the FRCS side (although its still handled better than in 2nd imo), I really dislike the "novels drive game world" stuff going on. Cyric was a HORRIBLE idea when he got three gods portfolios, the time of crisis was a great novel set but did real damage to the game setting imo (had to be dues ex. machined to get bane back, and I miss Myrkul; I mean, really, the shapechanger angsty fighter becomes the god of the dead, amd a pansy protectionist deity at that... please...stop... it hurts). NG God of magic? another bad idea imo; I wish they would just have her absorb Shar's weave as was hinted two years ago and go back to being LN. Also, as was pointed out earlier, having one extraplanar invasion of SUPERUBERBBEG planehopingmagicalpowerhouses of a NEW level of untold superbadassness every 2-3 years is kinda irritating from a GAME standpoint. Works great for novels. I liked all these novels a whole lot, have the series they were in on my shelf still, have read them all more than once, and I think the authors did an awesome job (especially last Mythal series, love that one and I actually think it is helping game setting - mad kudos), but I think game balance needs to be considered abit more, even (GASP) given primacy over novels. (although, again, 3.5 is handling this alot better than 2nd did, its only mildly irritating now, while the fallout from the Avatar trlogy is STILL painful).
JamJar 07-12-06, 05:28 AM	An interesting discussion. This is my first post so let me say hello before I start. In my younger days I had a lot of the 1e FR stuff, the old grey box, FR1 to FR10, etc. and I loved it, to me it was the best setting and I had most of them Darksun, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, D&D known world, Hollow World, etc. I stopped playing years ago but kept my stuff. 5 years ago me and the family emigrated from South Africa to the UK and I had to part with my collection. I have since discovered the joys of Ebay and thet all of the materiel is available and quite affordable. I am in the process of buying that which I had, I have started with the novels but I intend to get the gaming products starting this month. I haven't looked at the new 3e products and will probably get that too.
Xzamuel 07-12-06, 07:59 AM	I've been reading material, novels and sourcebooks, since the mid 90s, but it's always been exceptionally difficult for me to find players, so I have a lot of time to read up on the realms but not much time in them XD Either way I agree with the 3rd edition being much more coherent. However, I strongly miss the 2e style of writing, stuff like the Volo's Guides etc., which seemed infinately more personal and... just more absorbing. Unfortunately after Mysteries of the Moonsea, I'm not counting on the third edition stuff continuing to be as good as it was :( I for one am getting tired of sourcebooks that are exactly on the 160 page minimum mark...
dragonheart 07-18-06, 12:08 PM	As a player and DM since 1979 ( yeah a few of us really are oldtimers :D ) the world lore was better under 1e adn 2e but the game mechanics are better under 3.xe. Effectively I simply combine things from all eras where I see a need (for instance I tossed out the one initiative roll - in my campaign you roll inititive each round - takes a little longer but it keeps the flow of battle changing like a real combat does) to maintain realism as I see it.
JamJar 07-21-06, 04:02 AM	This thread inspired me so I bought a lot of 1e and 2e FR stuff from E-bay last week. I managed to get the 1e Campaign Box Set, FR1 Waterdeep and the north, FR2 Moonshae, FR5 The Savage frontier, FR6 Dreams of the red wizards and an adventure N5 Under Illefarn, all for just £12 (about $24). The stuff is very good condition the only problem is that two of the maps are missing from the box set and the maps are missing from FR5.
Old Sage 07-21-06, 04:27 AM	I prefer a lot of 1E lore, but most (not all, such as the ToT) of the 2E editions. I like the very BASICS of the 3E system (BAB and saves), but otherwise prefer the 2E game design methodology. I like lots of lore, lots of roleplaying, and little emphasis on numbers of any kind.I've gone into this too many times here for me to want to repeat myself. So, I'll just say that most of what GD has just said relates for me as well.
Old Sage 07-21-06, 04:28 AM	I have played the Realms since it's launch in with the "old grey box" in... was it 1987?Yes -- 1987 is the first year of the *published* Realms setting under TSR.