I am not a DM and have only tried it twice. Not very good at it to be honest. But...
I like the idea of the Spellplague and time shift, the upsetting of the pantheon and many of the other things that happened; I find these good and revolutionary. I don't see why one couldn't simply integrate these historical changes into a 3.5 ed campaign? And why not keep the old alignments. Bane will remain a LE god of tyranny and fear and Shar will remain a NE goddess of darkness. Amanator can be LN for all I care; the pantheon needs a powerful representative of that alignment.
What say you to my thoughts on the matter, essentially: historical/event/pantheon changes are good, 4th ed. is bad?
-That said, I do not find the "historical/event/pantheon changes" to my liking.
-Never forget that the 4e ruleset and the 4e Forgotten Realms are two seperate things. There's no reason you can't like the 4e rules, but not the 4e Forgotten Realms, the 4e Forgotten Realms, but not the 4e rules, the 3e ruleset, but not the 3e Forgotten Realms, the 3e Forgotten Realms, but not the 3e ruleset, or whatever other combination you can make up.
-That said, I do not find the "historical/event/pantheon changes" to my liking.
Sure...mix 'em up as one sees fit.
Why not?
Sure...mix 'em up as one sees fit.
Why not?
Because while one may have merit the other is a complete mess
1) Living Forgotten Realms: It's the 4E Realms, so I'll be playing it exactly as it comes.
2) DMing a campaign: If I run the Realms, it'll be a slightly tweaked version of the 3E Realms with the 4E ruleset. I'll discount the last couple of years from A Grand History of the Realms and make a couple of my own changes. Namely:
- Mystra changes the rules of magic on her own.
- Myrkul and Bhaal return.
- Tyr vanishes and Torm ascendes in his stead.
- A little more importance for Tiamat and Bahamut.
- PC Dragonborn would be the pre-existing Dragonborn who can now reproduce. They wouldn't be from Abeir, or wherever.
And that'd be pretty much it.
3) Play in someone else's homegame: Depends on the DM in question, although I'll suggest ignoring many of the changes from the Spellplague.
-Never forget that the 4e ruleset and the 4e Forgotten Realms are two seperate things. There's no reason you can't like the 4e rules, but not the 4e Forgotten Realms, the 4e Forgotten Realms, but not the 4e rules, the 3e ruleset, but not the 3e Forgotten Realms, the 3e Forgotten Realms, but not the 3e ruleset, or whatever other combination you can make up.
That's all nice and everything, but suppose people only really play D&D within the Realms? For those people, there's not necessarily a distinction between 4E Realms and the 4E rule set. I can imagine a lot of people who only play Realms for their D&D just bagging the whole enchilada if they dislike 4E FRCS.
What say you to my thoughts on the matter, essentially: historical/event/pantheon changes are good, 4th ed. is bad?
I'm still waiting on the 4E FRCG to see just how they handle magic in the Realms.
For me the depth and variety of magic in the setting has always been the framework that the Realms are built upon. If the changes to magic and how wizards, etc...work in 4E has a significant enough impact on the Realms to where I can't bring that flavor to life in 4E....well then I'm in agreement with you: Historical/Event/Pantheon changes would be good, while 4E should be shredded with a shotgun.
I specifically brought up questions in this regard (twice) at the FR GenCon seminar last year and I did not get answers beyond something like "err...rituals, use rituals..." from Rich and company.
We'll see.
Sure...mix 'em up as one sees fit.
Why not?
-Anyone running a campaign is free to include and change anything they want. See what GK did up there.
That's all nice and everything, but suppose people only really play D&D within the Realms? For those people, there's not necessarily a distinction between 4E Realms and the 4E rule set. I can imagine a lot of people who only play Realms for their D&D just bagging the whole enchilada if they dislike 4E FRCS.
-Their perception might be that there isn't a difference between the 4e ruleset and the 4e Forgotten Realms, but as we all know around here, perception doesn't necessarily mean truth. The 4e Forgotten Realms are the 4e Forgotten Realms. The 4e rules are the 4e rules. The two are interconnected, to a point, but are two entirely dictinct entities.
-You don't necessarily even need the 4e rules to play in the 4e Forgotten Realms. There's that Gurps thing,the 3e ruleset, the 2e ruleset, and so on and so on.
Because I was VERY interested in the 4e rules, and had planned on using them in the 3e Realms, because like Mirrik said -
Because while one may have merit the other is a complete mess
However, I have decided to use PRPG in the 3e Reams, if I even bother with the Realms at all anymore. I just don't see the 4e rules working all that well in the 3e Realms. Not that it can't be done, mind you, I just think the flavor is all wrong for it. I guess thats why the designers decided to give FR a makeover.
I didn't get to play the 4e rules this weekend as I planned, because neither one of my older sons came over (only the little ones), so I'll wait until next week. I think it can be fun, but I'm not really liking them for the Realms.
By the same token, the 4e Realms, if taken by itself as a stand-alone product, may be decent as well. It will never be the old Realms, or even come close to living up to it, but it may have its own merits - we'll know in Aug.
I think how they created the new Realms from the corspe of the old Realms is an aborton - they took a setting that had some of the deepest, well-thought-out lore and took the fastest route possible to achieve their goals, with no thought or effort behind any of it. The 4e changes are not neccessarily bad, it is the way in which they were implimented.
New regions LITERALLY dropped out of the sky! Can they get any lamer? A hundred years to figure out why the world is the way it is, and they go and use that horrid 'Abeir' thing as an excuse for everything. I don't even mind the Spellplague anymore - in retrospect, they needed something HUGE to change the way magic works, so I can live with it, In fact, I may even grow to like it... But Abeir had to be the weakest concept ever to come out of an RPG company.
I will never, EVER learn to live with that.
New regions LITERALLY dropped out of the sky! Can they get any lamer? A hundred years to figure out why the world is the way it is, and they go and use that horrid 'Abeir' thing as an excuse for everything. I don't even mind the Spellplague anymore - in retrospect, they needed something HUGE to change the way magic works, so I can live with it, In fact, I may even grow to like it... But Abeir had to be the weakest concept ever to come out of an RPG company.
-I just find it comically ironic that the regions that were literally dropped out of the sky were incorporated into the setting to replaces the regions that people often complained were...literally dropped out of the sky. I can see some of Hoar's work, there.
I hadn't even consider the irony in that - they removed everything lame with something even lamer!
With a hundred years to play around in, I just can't believe they couldn't think of seperate reasons for each thing, instead of using the made-to-order universal excuse of Abeir.
Dragonborn? Tiamet and bahamut squabbling over the ruins of old Unther, and one or both of them create their own servitor race?
Genasi? You have Djinni and a Efreet trapped in crystal for something like 8000 years, along with all the energy absorbed from the thousands of other genie/genasi living in Calimshan. The Spellplague makes the crystal go 'Boom' and all that Djinn-energy is released into the world.
The Changing Lands? We already had that during the ToT, its just this time it was for a longer duration and magnified tenfold. Why did Abeir have to be involved with that? The Spellplague can account for any of the landscape alterations they wanted. It was like they couldn't decide between two completely different RSE's, so they used both.
Maztica... anything would have been an improvement, so I'm sure the new continent will be very good compared to the old... by why couldn't the stuff n the new continent just be ttransplanted onto the old? Not only do we have a century for changes to occur, but we had a major magical upheaval.
Just what the hell was the point of introducing that gawd-awful concept of Abeir, the 'sister' world? That just makes everything else SO much worse. It wasn't even neccesary - it was completely pointless, IMHO. Someone decided Toril needed a another world for a 'dumping ground' and then rammed the idea down all of our throats... and left us gagging.
I'd really like to know which numnutz came up with that little gem.
You're right!
-One of the first things I noticed, after the initial..."disgust/dislike/whatever you want to call it".
Getting rid of gnomes and Aasimar...hmm....lots of stuff I am not happy about.
Gnomes aren't gone, they are in the MM. And by the way, so are humans and the other "player races", so gnomes aren't a monster any more than humans are.
The 4E version of aasimar (which will likely not be called such) will arrive when the designers can figure out a good story for it.
What say you to my thoughts on the matter, essentially: historical/event/pantheon changes are good, 4th ed. is bad?
I don't agree that 4E is bad. I don't think all setting changes are bad either, but I dislike the specific changes occuring in the FR setting.
Off Topic Stuff
Can someone point me in the direction of a good thread to check out explaining all of what's happened (that we know of) so far to the Realms in 4e?
I only ask because FR was the setting I started playing in, and that was still the best campaign I've ever been in. Lots of fond memories. Now, I'm a late bloomer, I know. I picked up DnD around the time when 3.5 came out. But when time came for me to DM, I had some issues with the Realms and ended up making my own setting, but I've been tempted to come back many a time. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Can someone point me in the direction of a good thread to check out explaining all of what's happened (that we know of) so far to the Realms in 4e?
I only ask because FR was the setting I started playing in, and that was still the best campaign I've ever been in. Lots of fond memories. Now, I'm a late bloomer, I know. I picked up DnD around the time when 3.5 came out. But when time came for me to DM, I had some issues with the Realms and ended up making my own setting, but I've been tempted to come back many a time. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Just what the hell was the point of introducing that gawd-awful concept of Abeir, the 'sister' world?
To eliminate the need for the authors to actually know lore
Reading the Countdown articles (re: FR) in the online Dragon would be helpful too. Also, check out the last few pages of the Grand History of the Realms book.
Reading the Countdown articles (re: FR) in the online Dragon would be helpful too. Also, check out the last few pages of the Grand History of the Realms book.
Throw in some of the Ask the Designers posts and you are up to speed, or at least what we know
Throw in some of the Ask the Designers posts and you are up to speed, or at least what we know
-And, of course, those bits in any applicable novels.
-MT's 4e Forgotten Realms FAQ does a good job in summing things up.
--MT's 4e Forgotten Realms FAQ does a good job in summing things up.
True enough. Someone should bump that thread if its falling behinf because of this dumb 1 board rule
So, I've started the process of making my own setting. It will be based on the open source rules, and I will be creating my own fluff/crunch for it. That way I don't have to worry about WOTC pulling the rug out from me ever again, or having to make significant financial investments to keep up with the game.
Shedo: You'll probably have to read more than just one thread to get the best sense of all the 4E changes to the FR setting.
Reading the Countdown articles (re: FR) in the online Dragon would be helpful too. Also, check out the last few pages of the Grand History of the Realms book.
Thank you, I'll take a look. Sorry, didn't mean to derail the topic ever-so-slightly, but with the surge of threads about it, I doubted a new thread would remain civil enough to not get locked, you know what I mean?
Thank you, I'll take a look. Sorry, didn't mean to derail the topic ever-so-slightly, but with the surge of threads about it, I doubted a new thread would remain civil enough to not get locked, you know what I mean?
-Thus far, only 1 4e-related Forgotten Realms thread has been closed due to incivility.
When I heard about the changes that were going to happen to the realms, I made a decision. If I play in the realms, It will be pre-spell plague. However, more than likley I decided that I would switch to a homebrew campaign all together. The biggest question would be, would it be 4.0 or 3.5? After finally getting ahold of the 4.0 PHB, I have decided that I will be sticking with 3.5. I really just don't like the system, particularly what they did to wizards, and their utility.
So, I've started the process of making my own setting. It will be based on the open source rules, and I will be creating my own fluff/crunch for it. That way I don't have to worry about WOTC pulling the rug out from me ever again, or having to make significant financial investments to keep up with the game.
have you looked into Galorian?