By Richard Baker, Matt Forbeck, Sean Reynolds
-While I like Rashemen, the region in general is one of my least liked in Faerûn. I never particularly liked Aglarond, The Great Dale, Thay, or Thesk. So, going into this book, I’ll admit that I probably was a little biased against it. It does have one of my favorite pieces of D&D artwork, though, on page 5, so…Flipping through it, looking at everything as unbiased as possibly, I have mixed reviews.
-I’ll first address the mechanics in the book. To put it simply: horrible, for the most part. Unapproachable East introduces the Star Elves (and has the goofy light bulb pictures that everyone knows about). I have come to like the Star Elves a little bit, but most of that is because of my own preconceived notions, my own lore, and a few assorted sourcebooks and novels that deal with the Star Elves. Focusing only on what Unapproachable East says about them, horrible. The other races, personally speaking, aren’t that useful, either. Gnolls, Taer and Hagspawn, those are all things that, well, to put it lightly, aren’t going to have too many players being, by virtue of what they are. Volodni are interesting, and Spirit Folk I like, but already have stats and such in Oriental Adventures. So, all in all, in theory, none of those races needed to have had stats included, and that would have freed up ten pages for something else.
-The Feats, and Spells present the silver lining in the mechanics section. A common complaint of mine is that generic feats, items, spells, and so on are often put into Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, and that these things basically waste space, as only Forgotten Realms specific stuff should be put in Forgotten Realms sourcebooks. With the Feats and Magic Items, there’s plenty of Forgotten Realms specific stuff. With the Feats, there’s a lot of Rashemi flavor. With the Spells, there’s lots of setting-specific ones, like the Nybor spells. That, I like.
-Now, on to the rest of the book. The Adventuring in the East chapter is nice, presenting the ‘major’ organizations in the area. It’s only four pages, and each group gets only a few paragraphs, so I think that’s a little abbreviated. Those ten pages I mentioned earlier? They’d fit in great here. There’s nine different organizations presented, so that’d basically bump everyone up from a few paragraphs to a page each. Sounds good to me.
-I like the basic format that each highlighted nation got. A geographic overview, more specific geographic features, places, people, politics, enemies, allies, society, a brief history, all of that stuff. I wish that there were more maps. Each area gets a page geographic overview map and a cutout map of a single settlement. I’d prefer less extraneous artwork, and more maps. Or, if that was not possible, I’d prefer larger maps, or maps of the capitals/most important cities of each.
-One thing that the book lacked, that would have been really useful, would be an all-encompassing map of ‘The Unapproachable East’. Each region has it’s own map, but that’s not the best way to do things, I don’t think. Devote an entire page to a smaller map of the whole region (simply just copying and pasting each smaller regional map and adjusting the size), or even a foldout map if necessary. That would have greatly improved my opinion on the book.
-So, overall, out of a possible Five Beholders, I give Unapproachable East Three Beholders.
The biggest problem in moving from the boxed set to the hardcover format was the lack of Maps. I agree 100% LK.
I think regions in FR should be more inter-connected - it makes the world more believable. I think if Dan were here, he'd use one of his favorite lines - "History does NOT exist in a vacuum", and I'd have to say that the way a lot of 3e's lore was presented, it looks that way.
I came away from this tome still wondering who the Hell the Nar were, why Impiltur got an insulting cameo rather then better coverage, and why the hell Thay has never bothered to go after the Vast or The Great Dale, and instead continuously waste their resources against Rashemen and Aglarond.
They took the 1e/2e lore about those main three, and then tried to create a region around them, and failed miserably. a larger tome would have done wonders, or a more-focused one. Too much geography in too few pages was 3e's greatest downfall.
We simply never got enough lore about anything to be complete. If only they had bothered to full-realize the world and provide tons and tons of lore, they way they did with Eberron.
FR sources barely scratch the surface.
I think more of a 'connection' is what LK was looking for (If I'm not mistaken). Each entry seemed to stand on its own, with very little connecting them, aside from Aglarond and Thay, of course.
-That's something else, something I didn't mention. Each 'section' gets a timeline, but there isn't an all-encompassing timeline. To get that, you need to "do it yourself".
one of the most useless books
I like the volodni, can't have enough plant races
why didn't Krash write the book, with the Demonlands
-That's something else, something I didn't mention. Each 'section' gets a timeline, but there isn't an all-encompassing timeline. To get that, you need to "do it yourself".
Ah, and here I thought that was what you were driving at - very little in the way of cohesion between realms. Its as if they are all just 'free-floating' near each other.
They basically took the 2e Spellbound material, which was just re-hashed 1e Red Wizards material, and tacked-on the Great Dale and Thesk, and a little about ajoining regions, without really contributing all that much to the Realms.
This what I call the "FR lore fallacy" - basically, all of FR's dissenter's were crying there was too much lore, when in fact, it was the same dozen or so books being slapped with a new coat of paint and re-printed.
The lore itself wasn't exhaustive - it was the never-ending need for the guys at WotC to keep re-distributing the much better material of those who had gone before (and erroneously place their names on those products, even though much of them is lifted word-for-word from someone else's manuscript).
If only the WotC guys could have given us more NEW lore, about new regions, instead of never-ending lists of broken PrCs and near-useless Feats, we wouldn't have needed this 'wipe' of Faerûn.
These guys could have had a field-day detailing Osse for 4e, and instead they took glee in trouncing everything they couldn't have done themselves.
But this is a tangent for another thread...
Let me just leave-off saying that much of 3e - especially toward the end - looked like a bunch of untalented people looking for anyway to get their name on other people's work.
Hmmmm... I'm feeling a 'banning' in me bones...
one thing i liked about this book was its treatment of the Great Dale. The Rotting Man is one of the better villains in FR imho, and the Great Dale section made me interested in that area a lot more than I ever would had been before.
-He is/was somewhat interesting.
it's certainly a shame that he was removed for 4E. replacing him (interesting) with "demon-haunted woods" (less interesting) was a bad decision.
-He was "killed" in Lady of Poison, and never "put back" fully, I guess.
I think however that we have to acknowledge that in doing a new edition they have little choice in repeating info (although they could have done with repeating a bit more this edition IMHO). It would be a fallacy to assume that new fans will have that earlier info or that all those who do have the time or will to upgrade the info.
If I were scoring the Rasheman section I'd go with a 3, good stuff but lacking anything to truly set it apart from earlier offerings. Overall though only a 2.
Here's what I mean about flavour.
Rashemen . . . Now, there’s a hospitable land. All
craggy mountains, icy dells, and frosty meadows,
criss-crossed with bubbling rills and white-foaming rapids,
cold blue brooks, and rock-lined creeks. I almost feel at home
there, save for the fact that there’s a Moradin-cursed sky
overhead, full of clouds and winds, with wet things falling
from it, not a nice safe rock roof of the sort we have buck
home. . . .
In any case, Rashemen is a hard place, home to a hard
people. Once you see past the grim, frost-rimed rocks and
dark, low-hanging trees to the real soul of the place, you see
what a truly beautiful land Rashemen really is, and what a
great people live there.
-—from Sigurd’s report
It's just a paragraph at the beginning of the geography (The Land) section of Spellbound. The section itself is full of colour and mood.
That is what I've found lacking since 2e to be honest, and probably why I've played in so few FR games since then.
Now it's just a dried-out husk of it's former self - devoid of life or any ascetically pleasing qualities.
Anyway, this is the wrong thread for this, and considering the OP is also our local constable, I better stear this back...
No, UE was not the finest product that came-out in 3e, but it was pretty good, and I think its short-comings are out-weighed by it's usefulness.
Hell, any book that gives me that many detailed maps is alright by me.
-He was "killed" in Lady of Poison, and never "put back" fully, I guess.
ah.
i don't read the novels so i'm lost when it comes to any of that material.
No, UE was not the finest product that came-out in 3e, but it was pretty good, and I think its short-comings are out-weighed by it's usefulness.
Hell, any book that gives me that many detailed maps is alright by me.
-Eh, I think most of Eastern Faerûn is useless, anyway...I did say I wouldn't let that affect the grade I gave it.
ah.
i don't read the novels so i'm lost when it comes to any of that material.
-Yes, he was killed at the climax of the novel, and the "returned" in some shape or fashion in the epilogue. Or something there abouts.
-- George Krashos
I really have to pull my finger out and finish that "East" timeline that I started a few years ago ...
-- George Krashos
-Makes me wonder where your finger is, if it needs to be pulled out...
still.....
That was a pretty disturbing mental picture... I now know-of at least one place I wouldn't 'go to' for my Realmslore. :P