Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dorth_Dwarvish_Runesmith 03-31-06, 08:12 AM	Hi, I'm another new dude. I'm about to receive the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for my birthday. :D I've heard a couple of great things about it, the possibilities seem endless. What I've heard is that this world hasn't had any real hero stories like Dragonlance or Rokugan (Oriental Adventures, for people who didn't know yet). It does have its stories about Elminster, and of course, Drizzt, I know that much. I actually wanted to know if there have been any stories (in the books) which have influenced the FR Setting a lot, like the War of Souls (and Lance and stuff like that) for Dragonlance. No one really posted any questions like this, and there isn't a real recap for the books of FR on Wizards as far as I know. Thanks a lot.
Ripe 03-31-06, 08:43 AM	Avatar series [5 books so far]: describe events when gods walk the Realms as mortals (Times of Trouble) War of the Spider Queen series [6 books]: describe events following Lolth's silence Starlight & Shadows series [3 books]: describe the reason why drow no longer face loose of racial abilities under sun Return of Archmages [3 books]: describe events following the return of a city full of epic level wizards The Year of the Rogue Dragons series [3 books]: describe events surounding last Rage of Dragons The Last Mythal series [3 books]: describing recent events hapening in Myth Drannor and Elven Crusade I'm sure I missed some of them, but each one of this series describe events that litterally change the way things are within Forgotten Realms.
Dorth_Dwarvish_Runesmith 03-31-06, 08:57 AM	Thanks. I just looked at the story line guides, and by George, they do actually mention those as Realms Shaking Events. Should've looked better, thanks again.
Gallameed 03-31-06, 09:43 AM	Its your world as much as anyones. :) There’s been a few 'EVENTS', mainly "The Time of Troubles" and more recently "The Rage" but there aren’t really any big things that are world shaking at the moment, nor are there any big heroes in the realms really, just local ones you can ignore in most regions. All the fan boys like me and my group get all panicky and cry about them so much sometimes that I think WotC tend to stay away from having stuff as HUGE as the events in Dragonlance happen in the realms. Any "big" events that do happen now are quiet and easy to gloss over (or not) for DM's. The realms is a bit of everything really. It’s like a big stinking sexy hodge-podge of winks, hat-tips and nudges from anything everywhere coz of all the crazy people involved in it, it sweats and breathes and eats. It was made from heaps of old boxes of "lore" from Ed Greenwoods stories and world creation notes; then was bought by TSR and mixed with your typical D&D greyhawky style core idea "rulesy" stuff then rammed with a sprinkle of novelsy stuff that was meant for Dragonlance; it had a run of 80’s marvel comics involving a group of freaky 60's looking adventurers that included a girly dwarf in a golems body called “Minder” and a wizard who suffered from "hat hair" syndrome! Then TSR glued, bolted and ironed-on other regional settings all around faerun based on other real-world style fantasy genres like hong kong movies and Arabian Nights or even Sinbad. The realms was/is shaped by books written by a bus-load of different authors, some of which (years back) admittedly didn’t even have much of a clue about the realms setting at all! "Its just the moonshaes innit?" said one of the big three yesteryear. Drizzt was originally a most excellent brain-fart/divine intervention missile that came into existence because Bob Salvatore needed to save his pitch from going belly up while on the phone to the bigwigs; how cool is that? This setting has anything from any other fantasy world you can think of crammed into it somewhere. Spaceships, elves going west, Arthurian style knights being all valiant, the lightside/darkside force/magic papage, psionics, flying islands, uber mages, dragons, giant space hamsters, dead gods making comebacks, stargate portals, lovecraftian gak, tons of campness, evil empires ruled over by black armored villains and heroes called "Muffinhead". OOOoooh, I forgot; it even has the terminator/cyborgs as well now: Dorn from The Rage novels. Today the realms is the bastard love child of the bearded American come-down generation filtered through fantasy pop culture and divorced smashed 80's kids who played pong while eating too many e-numbers. Although, I think it smells rather like tolkien and pink floyd in a locked basement being raped by Urosokidojo and lodoss wars at the moment. It sounds like it all should be terrible but somehow its not! Its quite good in a totally smooshkinated way. My best sandbox ever! ;) Just don’t take it seriously and treat it like some holy grail. The setting is yours and your groups. Its a made up fantasy world printed on beige (how apt!) paper to play "lets pretend we're elves with magic like from faerie tales and fight monsters called bugbears and ettercaps"- good for a head holiday with a few mates every now and then. The nice new 3rd ed campaign setting book (you will soon have in your lucky mitts) is like the new sensible, streamlined, low fat, hipper/cooler- more user friendly version of the realms cutting out all the old guff that turned people off it in the past and is much more minimalist and appealing to the modern geekages. Its kind of like all the crazy has settled to the bottom of the over-full cooking pot and the foam on top was the ambrosia of fantasy for us to lap at like a malformed kitten seeking teat.
Ladislaus 03-31-06, 10:22 AM	You may want to check out: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/frng