Does anyone feel that the source books created for the FR are too general in nature ?
I guess my main problem is that I find the material of each edition to be less useful then the previous. For example, the FR adventures book (TSR2106) was jammed packed with city maps and useful information. Now we have a 4e FR book that is full of new information, but it isn't sufficient to run a FR campaign with. I'm always stuck trying to reconcile the new information with all the older source books and modules.
What I would really like to see are detailed histories, city maps, personalities, and adventure ideas for each area. For example, if i want to run a game in the bloodstone lands I would like just one source book to reference that doesn't have anything missing. I shouldn't have to gather maps from older material and modules. Furthermore, new maps that appear in the most recent source material shouldn't be missing several towns and cities.
Don't need you tripping over canon now.
I dont like the new low lore setting either, but alot of the older lore still applies, the rule is, if they dont spefically say something is destroyed then we are to assume that its still there. The 4e guide basically just focused on the things that changed or were destroyed, so anything else we can safely assume that its still there. So all in all i guess they did an ok job with it. I would love to see a 4e Realms Adventures with updated maps, they have a few city maps in issues of Dragon but not nearly enough!
Opening the new 4e realms books feels like opening a children's book, complete with pictures and overly large font. Compare it to one of the old 3e books and you will see the difference plain as day. Had they gone with the 3e layout, they could have saved about 1/2 the trees that were used for the 4e books.
I remember getting the new 4e CS in the mail, eagerly opening the book and pouring through, looking for all the changes wrought by the spellplague. Unfortunately nearly every single one of my questions was completely unanswered in the book. It went straight to my shelf and has almost never been removed since the day it was released to the public.
Sorry state of affairs.
The promise was made at the time that we would have Dungeon and Dragon content to make up for what was missing. Call me crazy, but I'd rather have something guaranteed in my hands rather than a promise. I can't run a campaign with a promise. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush after all. To this day, there has been little enough content released to satisfy any of my curiosities about the 4e realms.
Look at all the different maps that have been published for Shadowdale. It seems the older the map the more detailed it is.
What these designers need to do is dig up ALL the material that exists for a particular region and compile it all into one central source.
With that said, I think this is a general problem that has plagued the recent editions of D&D . In fact, I even found that the 3e books were not as detailed as their second edition counterparts.
THat's a nice note, the older the book the more detailed it is...I'll keep that into mind.
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F
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Before there was too much infomation....
Now there is not enough....
Make up your minds. ;)
WotC can't win.
Before there was too much infomation....
Now there is not enough....
Make up your minds. ;)
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;)
WotC can't win.
Before there was too much infomation....
Now there is not enough....
Make up your minds. ;)
I think there is a big misunderstanding as to what constitutes too much information and not enough information.
All I want are high level templates of areas that we can use in our campaign. Take a look at the FR adventures book and how it is structured. We don't need a story or some kind of history changing event. A general outline with Maps, Laws, Patrols, Structures, and people is good enough.
For example, if the PCs chose to travel to some city the DM isn't prepared for we need to be able to wing it, but still maintain canon. All I should have to do during the game is open up the book to that City and continue playing.
Have you checked out the Cormyr backdrop by BRJ(Brian R. James)? I know its free. The Sarifal, Vaasa, and the soon to be released Chessenta article are not free.
Check out the Links thread in the Forgotten Realms General Forums. Its a sticky thread, so it's up at the top.
I hope that helps you out...
It looks like the Realms is in the Hands of the Living Realms, Freelance Game Designers, and the Authors. I think WotC is focused solely on the Core Brand of D&D, and the yearly setting. WotC is a different animal now.
I'm still hoping that we can get them to "come around"
I think there is a big misunderstanding as to what constitutes too much information and not enough information.
All I want are high level templates of areas that we can use in our campaign. Take a look at the FR adventures book and how it is structured. We don't need a story or some kind of history changing event. A general outline with Maps, Laws, Patrols, Structures, and people is good enough.
For example, if the PCs chose to travel to some city the DM isn't prepared for we need to be able to wing it, but still maintain canon. All I should have to do during the game is open up the book to that City and continue playing.
This is exactly what the realms was good for. It had an incredibly expansive campaign world, but you could always flip to a page in a book and start running the location on the fly. Veteran players and new players alike would be none the wiser that you had never heard of the city or forest before.
Books should have more maps, more detail about locations, more basic down statistics, more NPCs and more ongoing plot ideas.
The Forgotten Realms have always been a very well defined setting. Going to the same model as Eberron has (less defined, more make up whatever you want), does not work for FR, since the players who know it are loath to just rewrite or invent cannon.
What is it? Every 1-4 weeks we get a NEW thread that says "FR4E isn't good enough/detailed enough", blah, blah, blah.
There is NOTHING new to say.
I would love to see more threads where people actually say how they are using the new Realms, or the old Realms or a combination of the two, but instead this is the topic that gets repeated ad nauseum.
WotC can't win.
Before there was too much infomation....
Now there is not enough....Make up your minds. ;)
The fans never said there was too much informations. The people not playing FR gave this as their reason. Now WotC reduced the information, the fans left and these other people still didn't come[*]
[*]There's LFR; but the players don't come because of FR, it could be changed to Living Greyhawk 2, Living Eberron or Living Dark Sun on the spot without any changes in participating numbers (some people might not even notice). Even the writers are tasked with writing "an D&D adventures that happens to be set in the FR" instead of a "FR adventure" and are nowadays even advised to no longer call NPC in realmsian terms like "Sun Elf" or "Moon Elf" because that would be too confusing as 4e only knows Elfs and Eladrins
I would love to see more threads where people actually say how they are using the new Realms, or the old Realms or a combination of the two, but instead this is the topic that gets repeated ad nauseum.
Well then why dont you make some threads like that up?
Well then why dont you make some threads like that up?
That's why I joined www.loremaster.org. However, I did try that here a few times. The last thread of any substance I created was Curse of the Malachite Brands.
Edit: Otherwise, yes, I do agree with you. It's easy to criticise someone for posting the same anti-FR topic every tenday or so, it's more difficult to actually create a constructive thread. I'll take your comment in the right spirit and accept the challenge.
Well then why dont you make some threads like that up?
That's why I joined www.loremaster.org. However, I did try that here a few times. The last thread of any substance I created was Curse of the Malachite Brands.
Edit: Otherwise, yes, I do agree with you. It's easy to criticise someone for posting the same anti-FR topic every tenday or so, it's more difficult to actually create a constructive thread. I'll take your comment in the right spirit and accept the challenge.
Yeah its hard to keep a serious thread going around here, ussually some one will post a question, it gets answeerd, then turns into a big spam fest, Im not pointing any fingers or anything, Ive spammed it up myself, but I do try to offer helpfull suggestions, or answer questions if i can, and i have been known to have some serious discussions from time to time. You could make up a 4e Realms group, that way if some one does some threadcrapping you could just delete it and boot them out if need be. sfdragon has a Hands of the Triad group, it started out just talking about the Triad, past and present, then we decided to do a homebrew temple and decided it was in this town, so we made up the town, then we decided that we had to put it somewhere, so we put it in the Border Kingdoms, so then we've been going from there expanding out. We could always use some more people in there offering ideas and wotnot. Its open membership, and he has the link in his sig, so I dont think he would mind me posting it here. community.wizards.com/handsofthetriad
I've just started a Tell us about your FR4E campaign-thread. Let's see if it can be a positive experience.
Id love to see more articles like the Airspur and Tarmalune ones, more city maps! What they should really do is make a monthly PDF like Dragon or Dungeon, but only completely dedicated to the Realms. They could put some LFR info in there as well, like this is whats been going on in this area, this is happening over here, etc. That would definetly make me happy, and would probably drum up more interest in the Realms, and bring more people into it. Something WoTC seems to have forgotten, that was what brought alot of people into the Realms, all the details. Thats what I always loved about the Realms.
Agreed! I'd be willing to pay slightly more for DDI if it included 4-5 monthly FR articles.